Luxury and Twitter: an issue of the right words

Purpose This paper aims to provide scholars and practitioners with an innovative method of analyzing luxury brand associations in social media (i.e. Twitter). To do so, authors investigated the alignment between luxury brand identity and luxury brand image in online communication, taking into consideration firm- and user-generated content (UGC) in the form of bloggers’ contents. This paper introduces new tools that luxury brand managers could use to manage and adapt the way they communicate and interact with their customers. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a qualitative approach based on a content analysis of Twitter posts of six luxury fashion brands (1,334 posts) and the related Twitter electronic word-of-mouth of fashion bloggers (329 tweets). Findings The results show a match between luxury brand identity and luxury brand image on Twitter. Specifically, the findings indicate that both brands and bloggers stress the same dimensions of luxury (aesthetic, desirable, symbolic, restricted accessibility and hedonistic experience) confirming that the ways they communicate luxury brands to consumers are aligned. Moreover, the results suggest that luxury brands could reinforce their brand value by making more use of words that are semantically related to luxury. Originality/value This study approaches the relationship between social media and luxury brands in a novel way and provides scholars and managers with a tool for monitoring the gap between desired and perceived brand associations.