آیا فعالیت های بازاریابی رسانه های اجتماعی ارزش ویژه مشتری را افزایش می دهند؟ مطالعه تجربی از نام تجاری (برند) لوکس مد

In light of a growing interest in the use of social media marketing (SMM) among luxury fashion brands, this study set out to identify attributes of SMM activities and examine the relationships among those perceived activities, value equity, relationship equity, brand equity, customer equity, and purchase intention through a structural equation model. Five constructs of perceived SSM activities of luxury fashion brands are entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization, and word of mouth. Their effects on value equity, relationship equity, and brand equity are significantly positive. For the relationship between customer equity drivers and customer equity, brand equity has significant negative effect on customer equity while value equity and relationship equity show no significant effect. As for purchase intention, value equity and relationship equity had significant positive effects, while relationship equity had no significant influence. Finally, the relationship between purchase intention and customer equity has significance. The findings of this study can enable luxury brands to forecast the future purchasing behavior of their customers more accurately and provide a guide to managing their assets and marketing activities as well.

The luxury market has attained maturity, along with the gradual expansion of the scope of its market and a rapid growth in the number of customers. Luxury market is a high value-added industry basing on high brand assets. Due to the increased demand for luxury in emerging markets such as China, India, and the Middle East, opportunities abound to expand the business more than ever. In the past, luxury fashion brands could rely on strong brand assets and secure regular customers. However, the recent entrance of numerous fashion brands into the luxury market, followed by heated competition, signals unforeseen changes in the market. A decrease in sales related to a global economic downturn drives luxury businesses to change. Now they can no longer depend solely on their brand symbol but must focus on brand legacy, quality, esthetic value, and trustworthy customer relationships in order to succeed. A key element to luxury industry becomes providing values to customers in every way possible. As a means to constitute customer assets through effective communication with consumers, luxury brands have tilted their eyes toward social media. Marketing communication using social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has already been evaluated as business take-off tools for luxury fashion brands. Traditional designer houses such as Louis Vuitton provide live broadcasting fashion shows on their blogs. Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Donna Karan, and Gucci have worked with Apple to create iPhone applications. Many luxury houses create their own Twitter accounts or post themselves on Facebook. Brands and customers are communicating with each other without any restriction in time, place, and medium so that old-fashioned one-way communication is changed to interactive two-way direct communication. In this way, brands and customers are working together to create new products, services, business models, and values. Meanwhile, brands can gain exposure and strengthen relationships with customers. Social media marketing (SMM) is a two-way communication seeking empathy with young users, and even enforcing the familiar emotions associated with existing luxury brands to a higher age group. In addition, social media activities of brands provide an opportunity to reduce misunderstanding and prejudice toward brands, and to elevate brand value by creating a platform to exchange ideas and information among people online. With the increased use of SMM by luxury brands, it has become highly necessary to quantitatively analyze the effects of the social media. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify the constructs of perceived SMM activities of luxury fashion brands, and to evaluate the influence of those activities on customer equity and purchase intention. As the luxury business environment is undergoing a rapid change, this research will redefine the properties of luxury brands that affect their performance so as to guide businesses to manage and elevate them. This research will propose a strategy to enhance brands' performance by defining specific factors relating to customer equity and purchase intention. Moreover, the findings will enable luxury brands to forecast customer purchasing behavior and manage their customer equity and social media activity as well.

The study presents here examines the effects of the social media marketing activities of luxury fashion brands on customer equity and purchase intention. SMM activities perceived by consumers were significantly efficacious to luxury fashion brands' future profits. The findings of the study support the following conclusions. First, SMM marketing activities of luxury fashion brands comprise five constructs; entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization, and word of mouth. The brands' SMM activities perceived by consumers include distinctive values compared to old-fashioned marketing performances. Second, SSM activities perceived by customers are influential to all customer equity drivers. Since these activities for luxury fashion brands act affirmatively toward all drivers, they are fairly effective. As an integrated marketing medium, SSM activities effectively enhance value equity by providing novel value to customers that traditional marketing media do not usually provide. The brand's social media platforms offers venues for customers to engage in sincere and friendly communications with the brand and other users, so the brand's intended actions on the social communication scene were positively affecting relationship equity and brand equity as well. As the main purpose of marketing communication is to improve customer equity drivers by strengthening customer relationship and creating purchase intent, SMM activities contribute as effective marketing communication methods. With the growing interest of luxury fashion brands in providing luxurious values to customers in every way possible, using social media for marketing appears to be an appropriate medium to attract luxury consumers at the moment. As so, more luxury brands should engage in social media activities to anticipate positive contributions to brands by providing new luxury values to customers. Third, unlike findings in prior studies, the three customer equity drivers show no positive influence on customer equity in the case of a luxury fashion brand. In fact, brand equity has a negative influence in the present study. Possible reasons for the results are as follows. First, in the process of measuring the customer equity of the sample luxury brand, future purchasing behavior toward a certain brand was collected from general luxury customers whose customer lifetime value for the measured brand was not comparably high. Second, due to increased competition among luxury fashion brands, it has become more difficult to sustain customer loyalty toward a specific brand and other factors might have been affecting customer equity more than the three drivers examined in this study are hardly controlled by brands over time. The findings of this study not only draw attention to defining customer equity drivers of luxury fashion brands, they also indicate the great difficulty in measuring customers' future behavior. As competition among luxury fashion brands becomes more intensive from providing plenty of alternatives to customers, the prosperity of the brands no longer seems promising. The importance of managing customers as brands' valuable assets cannot be emphasized more. In comparing the influence of three customer equity drivers on purchase intention, value equity, and brand equity, this study found significant positive impacts. The Korean luxury fashion industry is barely into its mature stage, and Korean customers tend to be trend-sensitive cross-shoppers with shallow loyalty toward specific brands. Restating that, Korean luxury consumers hardly can develop relationship equity toward a luxury fashion brand. For now, brand and value equity are more influential to luxury fashion brands' performance than relationship equity. Finally, concerning the relationship between purchase intention and customer equity, which can be redefined as a short-term attitudinal variable and a long-term behavioral variable, the two factors connect each other highly. Luxury fashion brands should continuously invest their efforts to improve value equity and brand equity because both equities affect purchase intention. As SMM activities influence these factors, taking social media marketing into account can be a possible solution. This study had some difficulties in locating the effects of SMM activities on a brand's customer equity. However, the study should be counted meaningful in that it has defined attributes of a newly introduced manner of marketing communication and evaluated its effects in its introductory stage.