The communicational strategies of French High Fashion Houses on Social Media and their impact on brand image

Abstract

Since the rising of social media and the advertisement of luxury through these canals, the impact of this new communication and way of advertising on luxury brands are more and more studied. This present dissertation studies the impact the new communicational strategies of French High Fashions Houses on social media and their impact on brand image. Moreover, this study will not only analyse which strategy does have an impact on their brand image but it will also measure the impact in itself. Through the different academic papers that have been chosen for the literature review, several strategies were identified and selected in order to verify their influence on luxury brands image. The four main factors that have been identified by well-known authors as Keller and Kapferer but also by their peer, are the advertising on social media, the new masstige strategy, the reliance on influencers/stars and the arrival of the millennials. An online survey was created and launched in order to investigate the perception of consumers and non-consumers of French High Fashion Houses concerning how they perceive these brands through social media. The goal is to assess if the use of social media as a way of advertising and the new communicational strategies impact positively the brand image. The result of this study reveals that not all the variables developed through the literature review proved to have a positive impact on the perception of consumers and non-consumers of luxury to French High Fashion Houses.