CONSUMER ONLINE BRAND ENGAGEMENT AND BRAND EQUITY CREATION. AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON THE ITALIAN LUXURY FASHION BRANDS

The arguments proposed in this article move in line with theoretical perspectives that consider the brand as a “social shared cognitive resource”, and not an “intellectual proprietary one”, and the consumer as active actor in to brand equity creation process. The specific aims of this paper are the following ones: 1. to analyze the “spontaneous” initiatives of digital brand engagement involving Italian luxury fashion brands; 2. to conduct an observational netnography in order to explore the experience of the brand on the Web, based on the spontaneous conversations of consumers. These latter are traced in the digital tools, proprietary (digital brand communities, institutional Facebook page, Website) and non-proprietary ones (blogs, forums, business communities, video blogs, etc.); 3. to pick the managerial implications out useful for brand equity management in the luxury fashion industry.