Analysis of the impact of social network sites and eWOM marketing, considering the reinforcing dimensions of the concept of luxury, on tendency toward luxury brand

This study, with regard to new ways of marketing in today's digital world, has tried to analyze and evaluate the impact of marketing through social network sites as the most effective electronic word-of-mouth marketing strategy on tendency toward luxury brand or in other words, on purchase intent trigger toward this type of brand. It also outlines that "communication" policy plays a significant role on establishment of strong relationship with customers among luxury marketing mix strategies. The research has been done among users of social network sites that live in the north of Tehran (district nos. 1, 2 and 3). They are considered as social classes A and B, and there is high demand of purchasing luxury brands among them. The impact of structural factors of these sites, as well as demographic factors, with regard to the dimensions that reinforce the concept of "luxury" was studied on the tendency of people toward luxury brands. This study is considered as applied research, and the data collection method is survey-descriptive. The validity of the questionnaire was investigated by exploratory factor analysis through performing principal component analysis. Then the data analysis was conducted by structural equations modeling technique and also Spearman correlation test. At last, most of the hypotheses were confirmed and the results showed a significant impact of social network sites marketing on tendency to luxury brand. The research offers implications for developing effective marketing strategy through social network sites and helps luxury brand managers to build strong customer-brand relationship.