Checkmate to the competition in the metaverse:Nfts as innovative tools to win brand engagement through phygital luxury brand experiences

Luxury fashion companies used to create a certain distance from consumers to position their products as exclusive and elitist. However, the advent of digital technology and social media has completely changed the way consumers interact with luxury brands, increasingly empowering them and making them active co-creators of value. This paper investigates the role of NFTs - digital assets based on blockchain technology, aimed at identifying the ownership of a digital object in a unique, irreplaceable and non-replicable way – in influencing consumer engagement with luxury fashion brands. Results show that the characteristics of NFTs (interactivity, vividness and novelty) have a significant positive effect on brand engagement and that NFT-based brand engagement in turn increases consumer perceptions of empowerment and likelihood of purchase. Consumer attitude toward innovativeness was also found to moderate the relationship between brand engagement and likelihood of purchase.