Phygital Luxury: The Influence of NFT-Linked Digital Twins on Consumer Responses to Physical Luxury Products

With the recent rise of the metaverse, blockchain, and nonfungible token (NFT) technologies, luxury brands have embraced these concepts to expand their portfolios. To boost NFT sales, marketers often link them to specific physical products, creating digital twins. While this strategy may enhance perceptions of NFTs, its impact on consumer responses to the associated physical products remains unclear. Across six experiments, including one preregistered, we explore how merely mentioning NFT versions of luxury products influences consumer responses to their physical counterparts. We find that the availability of an NFT version negatively influences consumer responses to the associated physical product, an effect mediated by reduced perceived luxuriousness. This effect is particularly pronounced in the luxury domain, most relevant when the NFT is associated with a specific product (digital twin) and is not inherently applicable to all new technologies.