Luxury brands on social media: the influence of self-monitoring on user-generated content and positive electronic word of mouth

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of consumer self-monitoring on brand-related user-generated content (UGC) and positive electronic word of mouth (eWOM). It investigates how high self-monitors create content and positive eWOM about luxury brands to express social identity and self-identity. Design/methodology/approach Study 1 was a between subject experiment design with 2 condition brand types (luxury vs. non luxury brand), self-monitoring as an independent continuous variable, social-adjustive function and value-expressive function as mediators and brand-related UGC and positive eWOM creation as dependent variables. Study 2 was another experiment using different brands to validate the first findings. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk in the United States. Findings Impression management theory is applicable to understand why high self-monitors create UGC and positive eWOM about luxury brands to display social identity and self-identity. Practical implications Marketers could target high self-monitoring consumers and create platforms where they can express social identity and self-identity through displaying luxury brands on social media. Originality/value To the authors' knowledge, this research is the first to highlight the role of impression management theory that sheds light on the interplay among self-monitoring, luxury brands, social-adjustive function, value-expressive function and the intention to create brand-related UGC and positive eWOM. By doing so, this research attempts to resolve the conflicted findings on the relationship between self-monitoring, social-adjustive function (Lee and Hwang, 2021; Wallace et al., 2020) and value-expressive function (Ajitha and Sivakumar, 2019; Bian and Forsythe, 2012; Cronje et al., 2016; Graeff, 1996; Kauppinen-Räisänen et al., 2018). In addition, the current research offers better understanding of the mixed results in the effect of value-expressive function on brand-related UGC creation (Daugherty et al., 2008; Muntinga et al., 2011).