The Extent Social Media Marketing is Contributable to Customer Based Brand Equity of Luxury Brands

As more consumption-relevant behaviours occur online, an increasing number of brands seeking to enhance their brand equity are choosing social media as their new marketing tool. In recent years, a growing number of companies have implemented an online marketing strategy, while the emergence of social media not only offers exponential content spread and unprecedented accessibility, but also implants the concept of “public displays of connections” in the minds of mass customers, which have been essential to luxury clothing brands that have relied on physical stores for decades to maintain customer relationships. Social media is not only a prominent means of shaping and reshaping a brand's image, but it also prolongs the consumer's prior perception of it, which could have a significant impact on luxury apparel brands that have spent decades convincing consumers of the exclusive value of their products. Nevertheless, despite the acknowledged difficulty of calculating the return on investment of social media marketing, its efficacy has been supported by increasing evidence. However, despite its seemingly recognized success in terms of financial return, does social media contribute to the growth of brand equity for luxury brands that influence social media consumers?