Influencer Marketing and Luxury - Defining luxury branding through visuals on Instagram

Luxury has, conventionally, been an industry that targets privileged consumers in terms of wealth and social status. The growing importance of social media platforms have, however, caused luxury to become democratized. These platforms have made luxury more accessible to ‘regular’ consumers in the sense that the concept of luxury has become more reachable for a broader group of consumers, who may be potential buyers. Luxury brands are, therefore, slowly adopting social media marketing strategies, especially collaborating with social media influencers who serve as an important and trustworthy mediating party between high-end brands and ‘common’ consumers. This is essentially because the brand-consumer interaction can still be quite complex and therefore, influencers work to ameliorate the relationship between brands and their (expanded) target audiences. The fact that luxury products are expensive and mostly the wealthy consumer can afford to purchase them, though, means that luxury brands need to find ways to engage with and hold the attention of the less affluent consumer. This is important because the latter type of consumer has the potential to become future buyers if, for instance, their income increases. This means that luxury brands must design their marketing strategies in such a way that makes their products attractive for a diverse target audience by creating great brand experiences for them. The democratization of the luxury industry has also enabled consumers to newly define luxury through a visualization platform. As such, this research qualitatively explores how two luxury influencers, who serve as executers of luxury brands’ progressive social media marketing strategies, define and communicate the concept of luxury branding through visualizations on Instagram to target and attract more, diverse consumers. This is done through content analysis of luxury cars and luxury jewelry (particularly watches) posts. The theoretical framework of this thesis consists of important theoretical concepts including two types of influence that influencers exert, cultural values such as individualism, collectivism, and gender, as well as values pertaining to the dichotomy between exclusivity and ubiquity. These concepts were helpful to analyze the practices of the influencers in terms of (re-)defining luxury branding by means of visual posts. This research found that the influencers, indeed, embed such values that can attract both the conventional type of consumer, namely those of the higher classes, and the progressive type of consumer, namely those of the lower classes. The findings of this research, then, add knowledge to Instagram influencer marketing in relation to luxury branding, which is a relatively new research topic.