Exploring the relationship between social media use and anti-luxury behavior: implications for interactive marketing strategies

Abstract

Purpose The study explores different types of anti-luxurians on social media (SM), the characteristics of luxury brands, tendencies to disengage and the opposition to them to propose future directions for luxury marketing in the post-pandemic world. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative approach was employed, wherein 979 posts from SM platforms were analyzed with the text analytics software package KH Coder through word-frequency analysis and an inductive technique. Findings The analysis identified the presence of eight types of online anti-luxurians: true luxurians, nature-experienced lovers, life simplifiers, anti-haulers, highly expected consumers, natural environment protectors, antidiscrimination consumers and historic-politic antagonists. Their degree of disengagement and opposition were discussed and graphically mapped. Originality/value This is the first study to discover various types of anti-luxurians on SM platforms and graphically map their level of disengagement and opposition toward luxury brands. This study fills an existing critical gap in the luxury marketing literature.