Social media interactions and brand luxuriousness: the role of materialism

Purpose This study aims at investigating how the level of brand–consumer interaction between luxury brands and consumers on social media may affect perception brands’ luxuriousness. In particular, this is focused moderating role consumers’ materialism. Design/methodology/approach adopted a quantitative approach. Data were collected with two online experiments. Study 1 was run to test whether brand’s product description perceived as more luxurious when published platform versus website, if materialism influences effect. 2 explains underlying psychological mechanism by underlining mediating distance. Findings The results show that branded products are these communicated (vs Web page), high low) in materialism, due Originality/value Previous literature has neglected relationship communication, well potential differential effect low have, for brands, context. fills gap consumer-related characteristic (i.e. materialism) represents an important dimension consumption. Moreover, sheds light distance context communication.