Padideh Ghiasi - ICMA Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading, UK School of Business

Customers engaging with brands on social media is critical to social media managers; however, there is still a Customer engagement lack of in-depth studies on the drivers of consumers’ engagement with luxury brands. Drawing on 25 semiMotivation structured interviews with customers following luxury brands in social media, this study explores what moti- quality, and celebrity endorsement), brand-customer relationship (brand love, and brand ethereality), hedonic (entertainment), aesthetic (design appeal), socio-psychological (actual self-congruency, status signaling, and enhance and maintain face), brand equity (perceived brand quality), and technology factors (ease of use and convenience). This study helps marketing managers of luxury brands to understand how they can improve engagement with their customers. This research analyses customers’ motivation to engage with luxury brands on SM platforms. A qualitative approach was adopted due to the complex and multifarious nature of potential customers’ motivations to engage with luxury brands as well as the relative paucity of prior research on customer engagement with luxury brands on SM. We chose semi-structured over other types of interviews because the former is suited to research on motives, attitudes, values, beliefs, and experiences Semi-structured interviews allow the researcher to ask probing questions, aiding the discovery of new, relevant issues and helping respondents to recall information effectively. Probing also increases the likelihood of social interaction, enhancing the rapport between the interviewer and interviewee

Brands, customer interaction , consumer relationships, luxury brands , social networks