بازاریابی رسانه های اجتماعی برندهای لوکس: تاثیر بر ارزش سهام برند و رفتار مصرف کننده  Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior

1. Introduction The proliferation of social media created a whole new era for companies and brands, forcing them to seek new interactive ways of reaching and engaging their customers (Gallaugher & Ransbotham, 2010; Kozinets, de Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010). This quickly expanding marketing channel, which already reaches more than two thirds of all Internet users, provides unparalleled opportunities for brand and reputation building (Correa, Hinsley, & De Zúñiga, 2010; Spillecke & Perrey, 2012). Although social media provide new opportunities and benefits for brand management (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010), one of the persistent challenges – despite growing scholarly interest – is the difficulty with measuring the impact of social media marketing activities on key brand success measures (Schultz & Block, 2012; Schultz & Peltier, 2013). Research that examines social media marketing effects from the perspective of branding literature is also still mainly exploratory and lacks empirical studies (Hollebeek, Glynn, & Brodie, 2014). To date, brand equity has received only limited attention in the context of social media marketing and its effectiveness, despite a few notable exceptions (e.g. Kim & Ko, 2012). This research contributes to prior literature by offering a comprehensive framework that shows how social media marketing efforts influence brand equity and consumer behavior towards five luxury brands in four countries. The objective here is to systematically and comprehensively examine the influence of social media marketing on consumers’ responses through brand equity creation. The objectives of this study are to fill the gaps in previous research and to particularly: (1) measure the relationships between social media marketing efforts, brand equity, and customer behavior towards the brand; (2) evaluate the relative importance of the components of social media marketing efforts (SMMEs) regarding creating brand value and consumer preferences; (3) analyze the main components of brand equity creation in SMMEs; (4) measure the effect of SMMEs and brand equity on creating brand loyalty, brand preference, and on brands’ possibility to ask a premium price for their products, and (5) compare the results obtained in the four countries