Social Media Impacts The Luxury Consumer, Too

Think social media is only for the non-affluent consumer? Think the wealthy are not affected and swayed by the court of public social media opinion? Think again…

A while ago I answered the question Why Do Luxury Consumers Engage With Brands On Social Media? In doing so I explained that luxury consumers engage with brands via social media because of an affinity they have with a given brand(s), as opposed to most people who do so to get deals. I referenced an eMarketer article which spoke to this point.

Today, however, it would appear that the luxury consumer, while showing off his or her brand affinity, is also impacted directly, just as many others are – by what transpires in the social media space.

According to a recent survey from Unity Marketing, of those individuals classified with a high-net worth, as defined by having more than $1 million in investible assets, indicated that comments, tweets, Facebook posts and so on directly influenced what websites they visited (59%), what retail stores they patronized (56%) and also what designer brand they purchased (57%).

As for those classified as ultra-affluent – those who earn $250,000 or more per year, the numbers were very similar with 54% responding social media influenced website visits, 49% saying social media influenced their retail shopping and 47% stating social media affected their choice of designer brand.

Now in terms of age breakdowns, the younger crowd, those ages 24-44 were more influenced via social media than their older counterparts with 52% saying social media impacted their website choices, 45% saying social media impacted their retail store selections and 44% stating social media affected their designer brand of choice. Compare that to the 45+ crowd where the numbers were cut in half or more with 25%, 19%, and 13%, respectively, among affluents ages 45+.

So, now we know that if you’re a luxury marketer or the keeper of a luxury brand flame, particularly in the retail world, you need to be very pro-active in the social media space; you need to get yourself some brand ambassadors who will go the social media mountaintops and sing your praises because it would appear the luxury consumer is listening and is reacting to what they are hearing, er, reading.

Source: Unity Marketing, The Star Group, Social Media Impacts The Luxury Consumer, Too 

  This article was written for Business 2 Community by Steve Olenski.
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Author: Steve Olenski

Follow @steveolenski

Steve was named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred. He is currently a senior creative content strategist at Oracle Marketing Cloud. He is a also a member of the Editorial Board for the… View full profile ›

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