Social media marketing in luxury brands: A systematic literature review and implications for management research

Purpose Digital technologies and social media have improved the connectivity and collaboration between firms and customers in all sectors. However, in the luxury sector, the approach to social media and digital technologies has been slower than in other industries. The purpose of this paper is to review the academic literature on social media marketing in luxury brands to highlight the current state of the art, the addressed key research themes and the implications for management research and practice. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review of academic research on social media marketing has been conducted to gather, examine and synthetize studies related to luxury brands. By following a review protocol based on both automatic and manual search on the Scopus database, all relevant studies on luxury brands were identified and analyzed. Findings A critical conceptualization of social media marketing in luxury brands has been provided and the emerging key research themes have been categorized into four main areas. Originality/value Academic literature about social media marketing activities in luxury firms is very limited and existing studies focus only on certain aspects, contexts or single cases. In contrast, the value of this study, for both academics and practitioners, lies in providing, for the first time, a comprehensive and critical systematization of social media marketing academic literature in the field of luxury brands.