The impact of exposure to luxury brands on social media on self-esteem, conformity, and the counterfeit market

Billions of people worldwide use a variety of social media platforms, with Facebook alone amassing “1.56 billion daily active users as of March 31, 2019” (Appel et al., 2019). The majority of luxury consumers are daily active users of social media for personal use or to research products and trends. The counterfeit market cannot survive without the foundations built by luxury brands. There is an abundance of literature available on both of these industries discussing them in relation to the research objectives to some extent. This research paper investigates the impact of exposure to luxury brands on social media and its effect on self-esteem, conformity, and the counterfeit goods market. This investigation is carried out using primary and secondary data. Secondary data in the form of a literature review is used to examine the evidence relating to the chosen research objectives and hypotheses. A quantitative questionnaire is used as the methodology tool to gather primary data to further expand on the secondary data findings, with a total of 186 respondents. The findings of this study reveals that exposure to luxury brands on social media have little impact on self-esteem, conformity, and the counterfeit market of the research sample. It is evident that more research should be undertaken to revaluate and re-examine the results using the recommendations for future research