Digital Self in the Making: An Exploratory Study About Luxury Consumers on Social Media

The increasing digitalization in contemporary societies has rendered the understanding of online consumer behavior into a critical part of a company’s success. Undoubtedly, ongoing technological changes can influence the way we consume, or even the way we develop and see ourselves, through our digital presence. Building on the idea that consumers construct their selves based on their online behavior referring to both extended and core self, the present article sets to explore the processes and the mechanisms underlying luxury consumers’ formation and representation of their self in the digital environment and the social media, through their participation in social media narratives. According to the self-construal theory, which distinguishes two different concepts about the self, the independent and the interdependent self, differences between independents versus interdependents will be analyzed and discussed, in the context of the digital environment as well. Prior research on the digital luxury consumer has focused on strategic issues and social media and on how branding can change in such an era, on how story-giving can function as a co-creation tool for brands, on the relationship between bloggers and luxury brand perceptions, on how digital storytelling can boost self-brand association, and so on. However, it has yet to be examined how the consumers’ selves are formed, depending on their degree of independent or interdependent self, and the underlying processes accompanying this formation. As an initial stage of an ongoing research, through in-depth interviews conducted with luxury brand consumers engaging with social media, this article aims to shed light in this new research direction.