The Effect of Social Media Marketing on Luxury Brand Purchase Intention

Introduction

In the last two decades, information technology has been changing so rapidly that it is beginning to be hard to keep up to date on the latest device and this includes the transformation of social media (Dastane, 2020). A good example to cite is the development of mobile technology, where it was once a tool to make phone calls only and then it extended its function to send emails and it has now become an important tool in the world of social media (San & Dastane, 2021). Worldwide, mobile phones are in everyone’s hands and this has resulted in the means of being connected anywhere and anytime. In addition, the purpose of being online is to share valuable information, support a cause that they feel strongly about, to interact, build image and to demonstrate who they are and what they stand for to name a few (Ceyhan, 2019). Business entities have taken advantage of this and integrated their marketing activities into social media marketing, despite the challenges that this new method of marketing comes with. When an item is not essential but yet still highly desired, it is describing goods that is from a luxury brand and usually comes with the indulgence of a person’s senses regardless of cost. With the improvement in technology and social media marketing dependency, luxury brands have taken the next step in technological advancement by engaging with consumers through online interaction, this has given luxury brands avenues to generate inside information, motivate needs and offering targeted curated products. With this intent and tool in hand, luxury brands are here to capture the consumers that they have engaged on their social media and turn them into purchasing customers, converting them into revenues (Cuomo et al., 2019; Wai et al., 2019).

Upon a successful transaction, a consumer can now provide feedback and this allows innovation and product improvement. With the feature of instant feedback, the impact may also be counterproductive if a negative comment was shared as it would be looked into negatively on a social level and it will inadvertently corrupt the credibility of a business. With the knowledge of such risk, luxury brands are ensuring that the information that is being distributed needs to be correct and informative, making sure that consumer satisfaction is met and that this feedback be shared to encourage potential new purchase intentions (Sabri, 2019). We can see an increasing trend in the communications via social media with the masses. Luxury brand businesses realized that consumers are able to freely share and discuss ideas with other users on social media on other corporate or brand pages. It can be seen that this provides businesses with an opportunity to update and change their marketing approach that differ from traditional methods in order to inspire consumers. Consumers also play a part with the developments in the digital world, where there is a need to adapt and follow this evolving digitalization. Factors such as speed, pragmatism, and functionality are important for consumers in communication (Dastane, Goi & rabbanee, 2020; Imran, 2017). Hence the rise in the usage of social media, which have these features; and whilst on the social media platform, consumers have shown interest in following brand accounts provide accurate and instant information and where consumers are also allowed to share their ideas, perform product or brand research, coming up with good or bad opinions about brands and get near immediate response from brands. Around three thirds of the Malaysian population is active on social media which comes to approximately 35% increase compared to 2016, where it was slightly over half of the total population in Malaysia were active users. In this current era of social media, businesses have more opportunities than ever to learn from the feedbacks provided by consumers online (Statista, 2020).