The Co-creation of Luxury Brand Hedonic Experiences in Social Media: Luxury Brand Strategies from a Design Perspective

Background Social media (SM) is actively used to co-create online branding experiences. For luxury brands, consumer-brand relationships and brand equity are strongly driven by the online luxury hedonic experience, and to retain exclusivity online, they utilise brand-generated content (BGC) and influencer-generated content (IGC). However, because brands and influencers play different roles, they embed their characteristics in their content differently, influencing consumers’ perceptions. Therefore, this study explores how luxury brands and influencers co-create a luxury hedonic experience in SM by looking at content characteristics. Methods Considering BGC as functional/financial, symbolic art, and social content and IGC as product and event content, the luxury hedonic experience was examined through the content characteristics of visual attractiveness, information quality, and uniqueness and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) using surveys and in-depth interviews. Results The findings reveal that for both BGC and IGC, uniqueness was the most important characteristic for the creation of the luxury hedonic experience. While influencers brought uniqueness through daily life and sincerity in information quality, brands brought uniqueness through artistry with visual attractiveness and craftsmanship with information quality. Furthermore, information quality was underscored in both content for the importance of the luxury hedonic experience in eWOM. Conclusions This study highlights the influences of IGC and BGC and how they can contribute to the future digital design directions of luxury brands. The luxury hedonic experience of BGC can have positive impacts by showing why the brand is luxurious, not simply that they are luxurious. The luxury hedonic experience of IGC can benefit more candidness and sincerity.