Materialistic Consumers Who Need To Signal Their Status: Examination of Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers’ Luxury Brands Engagement on Social Media

The purpose of this research is to understand the key drivers and outcomes of consumer brand engagement (CBE) with luxury brands on social media. Specifically, this study aims to examine the mediating effect of CBE between antecedents (materialism, need for status signaling) and brand outcomes (brand attitude and brand usage intention) when consumer involvement (CI) is controlled. A survey was administered to 547 non-student young consumers who follow luxury brands on Instagram. The empirical findings show that antecedents (materialism, need for status signaling) positively influence brand outcomes (brand attitude, brand usage intention). Further, the results show a partially supportive mediating role of CBE between antecedents and brand outcomes. This research found prominent effects of materialism and need for status signaling. There are limited studies on CBE with luxury brands on social media. This research is a pioneer, as it extends the CBE framework by adding two individual difference variables as antecedents and two brand outcome variables.

Recently, scholars have investigated the impact of consumer brand engagement (CBE) on social media. Studies show that CBE is essential in building positive brand outcomes (e.g., brand attitude, brand loyalty) (Kumar & Nayak, 2019;Lin et al., 2018;Yang et al., 2016). Although CBE has been examined by scholars in the context of fashion (Molina-Prados et al., 2021), tourism (Harrigan et al., 2018), and social networking sites (Jayasingh, 2019), limited studies have tested CBE in the luxury brand content (Bazi et al., 2020;Oliveira & Fernandes, 2020). In addition, Hollebeek et al. (2021) called for future research to examine online consumer engagement as it might lead to potentially innovative opportunities for consumer-brand interaction.
Therefore, this research addresses gaps in the previous literature by investigating antecedents and outcomes of luxury brand engagement on Instagram. First, this study adopts Hollebeek et al.'s (2014) CBE constructs, as researchers typically adopt these constructs are one of the most widely adopted constructs in advertising and marketing research (Oblio et al., 2021). This study aims to replicate and extend the findings of previous CBE-based studies. Second, this research examines consumers materialism and need for status signaling as antecedent factors of CBE with luxury brands on social media. Scholars argue that consumers' materialistic tendency and need to signal socioeconomic status to others are vital factors of engagement with luxury brands (Colella et al., 2021;Kwon et al., 2017). Third, this research examines the mediating role of CBE between antecedent variables and outcomes (brand attitude, brand usage intention). Lastly, this research provides practical implications for marketing and advertising practitioners for effective social media marketing strategies for luxury brands.

Luxury Brands on Social Media and Brand Outcomes
Historically, luxury brands have been available for elites who have higher socio-economic status in society due to high price and excellent quality of products (Vigneron & Johnson, 1999). Research shows that luxury brand consumption is associated with gaining status and social prestige (Levy, 1959;Veblen, 1934). In addition, luxury brand marketing has attempted to create psychological distance from the mass-market (Kapferer & Valette-Florence, 2016). Accordingly, luxury brands marketing and communication strategies have been accessible to certain media channels such as high-end fashion magazines that are read by elite group of consumers (Alves, 2022).
As social media started to gain popularity from consumers around the globe, countless brands started to join this new force of communication as a way to engage with consumers in a new level (Song & Kim, 2022). However, many luxury brands worried that adopting social media would ruin the special characteristics of the brand (e.g., exclusivity, uniqueness) as millions of social media users around the globe will engage with them (Park et al., 2020). Nevertheless, in the age of digital transformation, luxury brands must join social media for better interaction with consumers. In 2022, globally renowned luxury brands (e.g., Chanel, Dior) actively interact with millions of followers on social media (Godey et al., 2016).
Younger consumers who use social media daily find luxury brands' social media marketing effective due to convenience and informative contensts (Biron, 2020). Further, recent reports reveal that 83% of young consumers who follow luxury brands have purchased a luxury product after seeing it on social media and millennials and Gen Z will be strong force of luxury market by 2025 (Danziger, 2019).
As reports show, luxury brands need to maintain a strong presence on social media channels as younger consumers live and breathe social media in a way that no other generation does. Furthermore, studies show that consumers' brand engagement on social media generates several benefits, such as stimulating purchasing intentions (Barton et al., 2016), increasing brand usage intention (Harmeling et al., 2017), and brand attitude (Shoenberger et al., 2020). This research focus on brand usage intention and brand attitude as outcome variables.
Brand attitude and brand usage intention have been extensively examined by scholars as outcome variables in much of the advertising and marketing literature. Studies found that consumers' positive experiences of engaging with brands on social media generates positive brand attitude (Shoenberger et al., 2020;Song & Kim, 2020) and brand usage intention (Harrigan et al., 2018;Hollebeek et al., 2014;Sadyk & Islam, 2022).
First, brand attitude is defined as consumers' psychological assessment of the brand in the context of favoritism (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993;Keller, 2003). Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) argued that consumers' overall evaluations of a brand is a result of the beliefs about the brand's specific attributes. Second, numerous studies found that consumer brand usage intention is one of the most common outcomes of brand engagement (Harmeling et al., 2017;Harrigan et al., 2018). As consumers distinguish between their favorite brands and other brands, their positive perceived brand equity of favorite brands affects brand usage intentions (Hollebeek et al., 2014(Hollebeek et al., , 2019Yoo & Donthu, 2001). Richins and Dawson (1992) conceptualized materialism with three domains: success, centrality, and happiness; they defined it as "set ot centrally held beliefs about the importance of possessions in one's life (p. 308)." More specifically, a materialistic person measures one's success based on material possessions. For them, materials are the centrality of life, and achieving materials is a way of enhancing one's happiness and psychological well-being (Richins, 2004). The evidence shows that highly materialistic consumers believe that acquiring possessions will help them achieve a stronger sense of life satisfaction (Ward & Wackman, 1971). However, materialism is also associated with adverse psychological effects such as dissatisfaction with life (Tsang et al., 2014) and lower self-esteem (Kasser, 2002). A study showed that materialistic consumers try to overcome these adverse psychological effects by acquiring more materials (Reeves et al., 2012).

Effect of Materialism in Brand Engagement on Social Media
Materialism has been found by researchers as a positive factor in consumers' media consumption. Scholars found a positive relationship between materialism, television viewing (Churchill & Moschis, 1979;Richins, 1987), and magazines (Belk & Pollay, 1985). The media generally show images of happy consumers who acquire material goods, which leads people to believe that material possession brings happiness in life and makes them highly value material possessions. This pattern is reflected in social media as well. Studies show that social media has become one of the prominent venues where consumers share material possessions and consumption behaviors with other users (Duong & Sung, 2021). Furthermore, countless brands join social media to promote products and services, which often display postings of videos and images of materials. Consequently, highly materialistic consumers tend to spend much more time on social media than their counterparts because social media satisfy materialistic desires at their fingertips (Chu et al., 2016;Kamal et al., 2013;Lehdonvirta, 2010;Lee et al., 2022).
Scholars found that materialism is positively related to luxury consumption. Dubois and Duquesne (1993) documented that luxury consumption expresses one's socio-economic success and cultural group membership. Because luxury products are typically expensive, only certain groups of consumers can afford these high-end products (Levy, 1959;Veblen, 1934). And this tendency positively relates to materialism as materialistic consumers highly value personal possessions to indicate their social status (Eastman et al., 1999;Zakaria et al., 2020). For example, Heaney et al. (2005) found that materialism is positively related to the consumption of status-related products among Malaysian consumers. Further, materialism is positively associated with purchasing intention of luxury products among American and Arab young consumers (Kamal et al., 2013) and young Indian consumers (Sharda & Bhat, 2018). As these studies show, materialism is an important driving force of luxury consumption among young consumers around the globe. Accordingly, H1: Consumers' materialism will be positively associated with a) brand attitude and b) brand usage intention.

Effect of Need for Status in Brand Engagement on Social Media
Status consumption is an individual difference variable that explains one's motivation to indicate the status or social class (Eastman et al., 2013). According to Eastman et al. (1999), status consumption is "the motivational process by which individuals strive to improve their social standing through conspicuous consumption of consumer products that confer or symbolize status for both the individual and surrounding others" (p. 310). As the definition explains, status consumption is positively related to status signaling as owning luxury products is the process of gaining prestige social status (Berger & Heath, 2007;Kwon et al., 2017).
Consumers' need for status signaling is a motivational factor for purchasing prominently (vs. subtle) branded luxury products (Pino et al., 2019) and purchasing fake luxury products (Han et al., 2010). Furthermore, status-seeking consumers tend to purchase luxury products that align with their self-concepts (Shukla, 2010) or tha help them gain popularity and respect from peers (Marcoux et al., 1997). Batra et al. (1999) found that status-seeking consumers generally prefer non-local products as they are considered status-enhancing products. Such status-enhancing function found to be positively related to consumers' brand attitude (O'Cass & Choy, 2008). Therefore, this research expects to see that consumers' need for status signaling is positively related to attitude toward luxury brands along with brand usage intention. Formally, H2: Consumers' need for status will be positively associated with a) brand attitude, and b) brand usage intention.

Mediating Variable: Consumer Brand Engagement (CBE) with Luxury Brands on Social Media
Many advertising and marketing scholars studied Consumer Brand Engagement (CBE) for the past few years (Bazi et al., 2020;Harmeling et al., 2017;Hollebeek et al., 2014). Scholars consider the CBE as a driving force of prompting brand loyalty and brand equity (Dwivedi, 2015;Leckie et al., 2016) and an impactful motivational factor of the consumer decision-making process (Bazi et al., 2020). Although scholars proposed different dimensions to capture the concept of CBE (e.g., Hollebeek et al., 2016;Vivek et al., 2014), CBE is believed to be a psychological state, which includes cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions (Brodie et al., 2013;Hollebeek et al., 2014). Brodie et al. (2011, p. 166) defined CBE as "a psychological state, which occurs by virtue of interactive customer experiences with a focal agent/object (e.g., a brand)." Further, Hollebeek et al. (2014) defined CBE as "a consumer's positive-valenced brand-related cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity or dynamics during or related to focus consumer/brand interaction" (p. 154). Similarly, Vivek et al. (2014) proposed a construct of consumer engagement that includes conscious attention, enthused participation, and social connection. The current study adopts the definition of Hollebeek et al. (2014) and uses the measurement scale as it fits with the conceptual model. Hollebeek et al. (2014) constructed a measurement scale for CBE that includes three dimensions: cognitive processing, affection, and activation. Cognitive processing refers to "a consumer's level of brand-related thought processing and elaboration in a particular consumer/brand interaction." Affection is defined as "a consumer's degree of positive brand-related affect in a particular consumer/brand interaction." Lastly, activation refers to "a consumer's level of energy, effort and time spent on a brand in a particular consumer/brand interaction" (p. 154).
In this construct, consumer involvement is considered as a motivational factor of brand engagement as it is related to consumers' personal relevance and interest in a specific object (e.g., brand). Consumers with high involvement tend to spend more of their time, energy, and money with a brand (Carvalho & Fernandes, 2018). In addition, Vivek et al. (2014) positively associated higher consumer involvement with cognitive processing, emotional experiences, and behaviors toward a brand. Hence, consumer involvement has been examined scholars as an antecedent to CBE in different contexts such as tourism (Harrigan et al., 2018), luxury brands engagements (Oliveira & Fernandes, 2020), social media (Hollebeek et al., 2014), sensory brand experience (Hepola et al., 2017), and many more. Although many studies examined CBE in various contexts, limited studies explored the CBE constructs based on luxury brand engagement on social media (e.g., Febrian & Ahluwalia, 2021;Oliveira & Fernandes, 2020). Further, scholars (Harrigan et al., 2018;Oliveira & Fernandes, 2020) call for future research to examine CBE constructs in different online environments with different antecedent and outcome variables. Therefore, this study will examine the mediating role of CBE construct between consumers' materialism and need for status and brand outcomes (brand attitude, brand usage intention), with controlling consumer involvement. This research controls consumer involvement because it is not in the primary interest of the study's purpose, but it is controlled because it could influence the outcomes. As this study tries to expand and replicate the CBE framework from Hollebeek et al. (2014), controlling consumer involvement in the analysis will show the striking roles of materialism and the need for status in the current research's framework.
This researcg expects that materialism will be positively associated with three CBE constructs. As mentioned earlier, consumers who are highly materialistic tend to engage with brands on social media as it satisfies their materialistic desires (Chu et al., 2016;Kamal et al., 2013;Lehdonvirta, 2010;Lee et al., 2022;Schivinski et al, 2022). Further, consumers' need for status signaling will be positively related to three CBE constructs. Previous research revealed that status-seeking consumers consider engaging with luxury brands on social media as a way of demonstrating to others their knowledge of the marketplace, as status and knowledgeability often consider closely related (O'Cass & Frost, 2002). In addition, consumer's positive cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity of engaging with luxury brands on social media will play a mediating role between antecedents and brand outcomes. Formally, H3: Consumers' materialism will be positively related to a) cognitive processing, b) affection, and c) activation.
H4: Consumers' need for status will be positively related to a) cognitive processing, b) affection, and c) activation.
H5: Cognitive processing will mediate the relationships between a) materialism, b) need for status and brand outcomes.
H6: Affection will mediate the relationships between a) materialism, b) need for status and brand outcomes.
H7: Activation will mediate the relationship between a) materialism, b) need for status and brand outcomes.
The proposed research model is described in Figure 1.

Participants and Procedure
A survey method was employed to understand the role of CBE constructs among luxury brand followers on Instagram. Respondents were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk, and those who only passed screening questions were allowed to participate in the study. After eliminating incomplete and abnormally consistent response patterns, 412 responses were used for the final analysis. Of these final participants, 37.9% were male and 62.1% were female. The average age of the respondents was 27.10 (range: 18−40, SD = 3.26). The majority of sample had at least some college education or higher (94.9%). Moreover, 64% of the respondents' household income fell between US$40,001 and $100,000.
To meet the purpose of this study, participants were screened out when they were not Instagram users and luxury brand followers. Consumers who met the qualifications of the current study were asked to provide the luxury brand name they are following on Instagram. Participants were then asked to rate a series of main survey questions about the brand they specified at the beginning of the survey. Upon completion of the main measures of the survey, participants' answers to one attention check question. Lastly, respondents' demographic items were collected. Respondents were then debriefed and thanked for their participation.

Measures
All items were adopted from previous studies and measured using 7-point Likert-type scales (1 = "strongly disagree" and 7 = "strongly agree"). Reliabilities for the measures were acceptable as they were above the threshold level of .70. Item scores of each measure were averaged to create an index score.
Materialism. Materialism was measured using Richins's (2004)    Brand attitude. Brand attitude was measured with three items (Lutz, 1975) to capture the extent to which individuals have a favorable evaluation of the luxury brand they are following on Instagram (Cronbach's α = .86, M = 6.02, SD = 1.04).
Brand usage intent. Brand usage intent was measured using four items (Yoo & Donthu, 2001) assessing the extent of the likelihood of purchasing goods from the luxury brand they follow on Instagram than other brands (Cronbach's α = .89, M = 6.00, SD = 1.35).

Data Analysis
To test the proposed hypotheses (H1, H2, and H3), hierarchical ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis has been used. Consumer involvement, gender, age, and income were used as covariates in the analysis. For the regression analysis, control variables were entered first followed by entering predictors, that is, materialism and need for status. Model 4 in PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013) was employed to test H4 and H5, proposing the indirect effects of materialism and the need for status on brand attitude and brand usage intent through CBE dimensions (i.e., cognitive processing, affection, and activation). The bootstrapping method was applied with 5,000 samples.

Hypotheses Testing
H1a-b proposed that individuals' materialistic levels would be positively associated with brand attitude and brand usage intention. Materialism was positively related to brand attitude (β = .13, p < .01), supporting H1a. H2a-b predicted that individuals' need for status would positively associate with brand attitude and brand usage intention. The need for status was only positively associated with brand usage intention (β = .16, p < .01). Hence, H2b was supported. H3a-c proposed that materialism would positively associate with cognitive processing, affection, and activation. Not as expected, no significant associations were found between materialism and CBE outcomes. Thus, H3a-c were not supported. H4a-c postulated that the need for status would be positively associated with cognitive processing, affection, and activation. As expected, individuals' need for status was significantly predicted cognitive processing (β = .23, p < .001), affection (β = .20, p < .001), and activation (β = .20, p < .001). Therefore, H4a-c were supported. See Table 1 for the results. H5 proposed the mediating role of cognitive processing (i.e., first CBE factor) in the effect of materialism (H5a) and need for status (H5b) on brand outcomes, such as, brand attitude and brand usage intention. The results (Table 2)  proposed the mediating role of affection (i.e., second CBE factor) in the relationships between materialism (H6a) and need for status (H6b) on brand outcomes. As shown in Table 3, through affection, there were significant indirect effects of materialism (B = .09, 95% CI = [.031, .161]; B = .10, 95% CI = [.032, .190]) and need for status (B = .09, 95% CI = [.048, .140]; B = .09, 95% CI = [.045, .150]) on brand attitude and brand usage intention, respectively. Hence, H6a-b was supported. H7 proposed the significant mediating role of activation (i.e., last CBE factor) for the associations between materialism (H7a) and need for status (H7b) and both outcomes. The results (Table 4)

Discussion of Results
Previous studies have examined variables to explain consumer motivation for engaging with brands on social media (Bazi et al., 2020;Oliveria & Fernandes, 2020). As such, these studies provided limited insights into consumers' motivations for engaging with luxury brands. Therefore, the current study proposed that consumer materialism and need for status signaling as a part of an integrative framework for explaining the antecedents of brand engagement on social media. Further, this research proposed three CBE constructs mediate the relationship between antecedents and brand outcomes.
This research revealed that consumer materialism is positively related to brand attitude. This finding aligns with previous research noting that consumers' materialistic tendencies and need for signaling socioeconomic status predict positive brand attitudes and brand usage intention when it comes to luxury brands (Kamal et al., 2013;O'Cass & Choy, 2008;Sharda & Bhat, 2018). However, results showed no relationship between materialism and brand usage intention. This finding contradicts previous research that noted that materialism positively associates with luxuy brand usage intention (Kamal et al., 2013). This finding implies the importance of positive CBE with luxury brands. Specifically, it implies that materialistic consumers tend to have strong brand usage intention through positive CBE with luxury brands on social media.
Moreover, the current study revealed that status-seeking consumers tend to have strong brand usage intention for the luxury brands they follow on social media. This finding supports previous research showing that status consumption positively relates to luxury brand usage (Stokburger-Sauer & Teichmann, 2013). However, the current research found no relationship between need for status and brand attitude. This finding contradicts previous research showing that status-seeking consumers tend to have positive attitudes toward luxury brands (Eastman et al., 1999;O'Cass & Frost, 2002). This finding provides additional supportive evidence of the impact of CBE among status-seeking consumers. It showed consumers' positive CBE with luxury brands on social media generated an indirect relationship between the need for status and brand attitude.
Previous research showed materialistic consumers found that engaging with brands on social media is a way to satisfy their materialistic desire (Chu et al., 2016;Lee et al., 2022;Schivinski et al., 2022). However, this pattern might not be applicable to younger consumers who use social media as a daily ritual (Biron, 2020). Recent reports show that many younger consumers follow at least one luxury brands on social media (Auxier & Anderson, 2021). Therefore, regardless of one's materialistic tendency, engaging with luxury brands on social media might gratify one's cognitive needs (Adjei et al., 2010) or social integrative needs (Zollo et al., 2020).
The current study proposed that consumers' need for status would predict the CBE constructs because status-seeking consumers tend to engage with luxury brands on social media to show their marketplace knowledge (O'Cass & Frost, 2002). The results provided evidence that status-seeking consumers cognitively, emotionally, and actively engage with luxury brands on social media. The current study's findings are in line with previous research noting that status-seeking consumers tend to engage with luxury brands communities on social media because this engagement delivers self-enhancement benefits and emotional gratification (Kwon et al., 2017;Pentina et al., 2018).
In addition, this research expected to find a mediating role of CBE constructs between antecedents and brand outcomes. The results showed that CBE constructs mediate the relationship between antecedents and brand outcomes. This finding reflects previous studies noticing that materialistic and social media usage are positively related (Kamal et al., 2013). Materialistic consumers tend to have positive brand attitudes and brand usage intention through engaging with luxury brands on social media.
Moreover, the results revealed that CBE constructs mediate the relationship between the need for status and brand outcomes. As status-seeking consumers experience positive CBE aspects from following luxury brands on social media, they form positive brand attitudes and usage intention. Kwon et al. (2017) found that status-seeking consumers tend to engage with luxury brands on social media because it enables them to bolster their self-concepts and makes them feel good about themselves. Based on this research's findings, one can assume that status-seeking consumers might feel good about themselves when engaging with luxury brands on social media and, ultimately, have positive feelings about them.

Conclusion, Limitations, and Future Research
Many luxury brand marketers allocate advertising budgets to social media due to its significant impact as a marketing tool (Enberg, 2022). And some, but not all, consumers follow luxury brands on social media, thereby assisting marketers significantly in amplifying brand messages and meanings among target consumers. However, there is a dearth of scholarly research on antecedents and outcomes of consumers' brand engagement with luxury brands on social media. This research proposed two individual difference variables (materialism and need for status) as a part of an integrative framework for explaining consumers' motivations for engaging with luxury brands on social media. Further, numerous studies examined consumer involvement as a motivational variable in the CBE framework (e.g., Bazi et al., 2020;Harrigan et al., 2018;Hollebeek et al., 2014), but this project aimed to find the connection between antecedents and brand outcomes when involvement is controlled. The current study revealed that CBE constructs mediate the relationship between antecedents and brand outcomes regardless of consumers involvement in luxury brands. This is a novel approach to expand and replicate Hollebeek et al.'s (2014) CBE framework by testing the framework with variables that are relevant to the luxury brand context.
This study suggests some actionable implications for practitioners. This study confirms the motivational factors that drive consumers' engagement with luxury brands on Instagram. The results showed that luxury brands social media advertising strategies should differ from non-luxury brands. First, in creating social media content, practitioners must consider how materialism and the need for status signaling affect consumer engagement and ultimately generate a positive brand attitude and brand usage intention. Previous studies showed that materialism is positively associated with the social acceptability and communicative ability of products or brands (Fitzmaurice & Comegys, 2006). Therefore, luxury brands' social media postings need to highlight the popularity of the products among the target consumers along with the ability to signal luxury brands' value. Further, practitioners could collaborate with opinion leaders or high-end brand ambassadors who play a vital role in boosting the brand status by creating postings or stories. For example, Louis Vuitton named K-pop group BTS as its global brand ambassador, while Tiffany and Co collaborates with Blackpink singer Rosé. These young, talented stars are not only popular among young consumers, but millionaires themselves. Therefore, collaborating with young, successful celebrities is an effective marketing communication strategy targeting status-seeking consumers. Moreover, practitioners could encourage Instagram followers to post pictures or videos of consumers using the brand products or services using specific hashtags (e.g., #loveChanel). Also, as materialistic and status-seeking consumers voluntarily create content, their postings will be a part of luxury brands' social media marketing. Co-creating contents might virtually satisfy those consumers' aspirations of being a member of an elite prestigious society.
Lastly, the current research makes a novel theoretical contribution and also provide practical implications for professionals. However, there are some limitations. First, research participants were asked to self-select luxury brands they follow on Instagram. Although self-selecting brands nhances external validity, it does not grant the characteristics of selected brands. Therefore, scholars might want to provide a set of reference luxury brands for future research. Second, the current research showed that respondents primarily selected luxury brands that sell products. However, as the luxury experience market (e.g., luxury cruises) is growing internationally, scholars might want to examine the CBE framework with luxury services or experiences. Third, as brands are dynamic entities (Stern, 2006), scholars might want to examine how a luxury brand's evolving nature influence consumer engagement on social media. Next, the current study describes primarily young consumers from the United States. As the luxury market in Asia is significantly expanding, scholars might want to test the current study's framework based on younger consumers from Asian countries such as China and South Korea. Further, scholars might want to examine this study's conceptual framework by using advanced data analysis (e.g., SEM). Lastly, this research-controlled variables, such as gender, age, and income for the data analysis. As scholars suggested, these variables may play moderating roles in the CBE constructs (Godey et al., 2016;Kauppinen-Raisanen et al., 2018). Thus, scholars might want to examine these variables in future research. The theoretical insights and practical implications provided by this study should stimulate such future research efforts.