Janna Schubert 
Digital Innovation in the Luxury and Fine Art Industry 
How Does Social Media Performance Correlate With Sales And Auction Prices?

Academic Paper from the year 2014 in the subject Art – Arts Management, grade: A, École des hautes études commerciales de Paris (Luxury Strategy), language: English, abstract: With a globally rising percentage of internet access and time spent on social media in emerging, developing as well as mature markets, investment into an exceptional digital customer experience can be more and more efficiently leveraged and scaled.

This thesis aims to quantitatively and qualitatively determine whether a measurable influence of users’ social media interaction with artists and luxury brands on their prices and sales exists, how it manifests itself and which conclusions and recommendations can be drawn from its existence and applied to both industries. Does a Facebook Share translate into a good’s sale? Is art’s instagramisation reflected in auction prices? And how can we measure the paradigm shift in these traditional industries, led by democratization of information- and opinion-sharing, exhibited by rising amateur-experts and new opinion leaders afar from established critics?