Luxury as Identity Infrastructure in Global Platform Markets: A Serial Mediation Model of Digital Identity Persistence and Social Legibility

Global digital platforms expose luxury consumption to culturally diverse audiences, making it difficult for consumers to maintain consistent identity expression across contexts. Prior research on luxury signaling, global branding, and digital self presentation remains fragmented and offers limited explanation of how individuals sustain coherent identities under conditions of persistent global visibility. This study proposes that luxury brands function as identity infrastructure that supports stable self presentation across platforms and cultures.Integrating global branding, signaling theory, and digital identity research. A process model is developed and tested in which Luxury Identity Infrastructure, a higher order formative construct comprising cultural legitimacy, symbolic consistency, platform embeddedness, and emotional coherence enhances Digital Identity Persistence which increases Social Legibility and ultimately strengthens Identity Coherence.Two stage PLS SEM analysis using SmartPLS 4 from 300 digitally engaged luxury consumers in India supports the proposed sequential structure. Moderation tests for Perceived Value Intensity and Luxury Cultural Mindset are non significant, indicating that the identity stabilizing role of luxury remains structurally robust across the range of value intensity and cultural orientation captured within this sample. These findings suggest that, within this single country context, globally recognized luxury symbols may function as identity anchors in digitally mediated markets.