Luxury Brands Essay

ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE creation OF LUXURY AN preliminary ANALYSIS Bernard Dubois, Groupe H. E. C. Gilles Laurent, Groupe H. E. C. Even though recent old age book non been extremely favorable for the luxuriousness industry (the ComitT Colbert which includes numerous prestigious French c all in all Chanel, Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, etc repports a 1. 5% increase in unvoiced damage for 1993), its growth rate, considered everyplace a endless period, remains impressive. Colbert companies throw off much than doubled their gross sales over the last eight years (ComitT Colbert, 1991, 1993).In 1993, they achieved a global turnover of intimately USD 5. 5 billion. The Pacific Rim countries delineate 28% of that cadence (21. 6% in 1988), equally divided amidst Japan and the other(a) Asian countries. Interestingly enough, besides, much(prenominal) growth in demand has non been matched by an equivalent progress in consumer look into and what was estimated by McKinsey (in 199 0) to be a USD 60 billion grocery store largely remains unexplored territory (McKinsey, 1991). virtually studies obviously have been conducted and published in the past tense but they tended to focus on coitusly limit aspects. For example, the utilisation habits of the affluent have been investigated regularly since Veblens seminal work (Veblen, 1899) and, today, anecdotal reports (Stanley, 1988, 1991) as closely as in-depth monographies of specific segments such(prenominal) as top(prenominal) line wasps (Hirschman, 1988) or nouveaux-riches (LaBarbera, 1988) be available.Limiting the investigating of the high brio market to the asideline of privileged consumers however would move to recognize that, under the influence of public exposure strategies adopted by many extravagance goods companies (for brands such as Dior or Yves Saint-Laurent, accessories may salute up to deuce thirds of their sales), todays demand for sumptuousness goods primarily consists of ordinary consumers who, from time to time, transform their trust to acquire a opulence item into reality.Similary, a fewer studies have been published on highlife brands, for instance on issues such as their relative positions in peoples mind (Dubois and Duquesne, 1993 weber and Dubois, forthcoming) or their adopters char exerti mavinristics (Andrus, smooth and Johnson, 1986) but many prodigality goods (houses, diamonds, furniture, etc ) belong to intersection point categories where branding is not a salient dimension, plot, at the same time, a few brands (such as FabergT) which were in the past considered as highlife names fancym to have lost their affiliation to the sumptuosity valet de chambre, usually because they have overdiff apply their products.Finally, some inquiry has besides been published on the determinants of the erudition of extravagance products, emphasizing economic (Leibenstein, 1950 st iodinmason, 1981) socio-demographic (Dubois and Laurent, 1993) or cultural aspects (Dubois and Duquesne, 1993 Mason 1993) but no overall conceptual scheme, feign or theory has been passing- authentic yet. Paradoxically, unmatchable of the untapped question argonas concerns the very character of cognitions and views attached to the name prodigality itself.This is somewhat surprising because even effortless conversations give out that the word opulence evokes quite strong connotations among people. Some attach to it very positive receiveings art object others argon quick to conduct their disdain, but few are left(p) indifferent. The absence of re take care on the word sumptuosity also is unfortunate because, in several product categories, the sumptuosity adjective is used routinely to segment markets and to position products. In the gondola industry for example, twain manufacturers and consumers clearly identify high life models (Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Infiniti, Cadillac, etc) usually advertised as such. The same holds t rue(a) for such services as hotels or restaurants. The accusive of this paper is to report on an exploratory analysis of the sciences and attitudes attached to the word (and underlie concept of) high life. It is hoped that the results presented below will stimulate further research in the area and eventually contribute to the learning of a theory of luxury accomplishment and use behavior. METHOD In give to explore the moments attached to the word luxury, a two-step subject field methodology was adopted.Other approaches such as semiotics could also have been used but were left less appropriate to explore, and to some extent, quantify consumers attitudes towards the luxury concept (Wargnier, 1985). First, in-depth interviews were conducted by a professional psychologist with xvi consumers selected for their widely different (and complementary) profiles. Both males and females were equally represented in the panel and age varied from 17 to 70 years. Occupations were also s trongly contrasted, ranging from sales rep to student and from opera singer to mechanic.All interviews were conducted at home, on a face-to-face al-Qaida, and taped. On the posterior of results obtained from such qualitative research, a battery of attitudinal items was let outed and administered to a sample of 440 French consumers. Although not arbitrarily drawn, the sample was chosen according to quotas set in terms of sex, age and geographical location. given(p) the nature of the topic under investigation, it was decided to overrepresent female respondents and to underrepresent cut down income categories. All interviews were conducted by professional interviewers on a face to face basis.Although the questionnaire included many questions near specific product categories such as perfumes, jewelry, etc provided the results connected with qualitative research and the general attitudinal statements are report in this paper. RESULTS www. acrwebsite. org/search/view-conference-pr oceedings. aspx? Id=11539 1/4 3/4/13 Attitudes Towards the Concept of highlife an Exploratory Analysis by Bernard Dubois and Gilles Laurent From the results obtained through qualitative research, several important themes emerge in relation to the concept of luxury.First, the world luxury itself is spontaneously associated with other terms such as (in decreasing order of frequency) upscale, quality, good orientation, class, but also flashiness and bad taste. All of these terms overlap in meaning to a certain extent but also have unequivocal connotations. For example, the key comprehend rest between upscale and luxury products is that the former accuse a relative position on an critical scale slice the latter correspond to a self-contained entity. Upscale products also are naturally connected with material goods while the concept of luxury encapsulates typic and cultural values.During interviews, many respondents referred to abstracts concepts such as space, time, or free dom to convey their perceptions of luxury. The fact that both good taste and bad taste are associated with luxury, sometimes by the same people, clearly reveal the ambivalent nature of respondents feelings, a theme which has been lately investigated in the context of gift giving behavior (Sherry, McGrawth and Levy, 1993). Typical contrasts emerge on dimensions such as essential/superfluous, decent/indecent, quality/gadgetGiven this ambivalence, it is not surprising to find that luxury items a lot provoke avoidance/attraction reactions. For many respondents, luxury products are desirable when contemplated at a distance, at a day-dreaming level when a specific barter for is considered (sometimes ruminated), guilt feelings arise however and the grease integritys palmsing act is experienced by many as a depravity, a not totally excusable start to break off daily routine and digest away, at least temporarily. TABLE 1 (/volumes/ap01/01274t01. gif) (/volumes/ap01/01274t01. gif) A TTITUDINAL STATEMENTS more or less LUXURY (/volumes/ap01/01274t01.gif) At the same time, the luxury transgression end also be a regression, a trip back to ones regard childhood, when everything was warm and smooth. This would explain why the concept of luxury was felt by many to be relative and idiosyncratic. During interviews, a number of respondents spontaneously started to bring out their luxury, as if they were talking approximately a secret garden, only when known to them. The dual nature of luxury-a world in itself and a world for me-certainly accounts for a large correspondence of the ambivalence of feelings.Without oversimplyfing too much, one could say that many ostracise feelings are attached to others luxury, while the positive ones are kept for my luxury. On the basis of such themes, a battery of 34 attitudinal items was developed, pretested and administered. The attitudinal statements as well as the overall frequencies are presented in Table 1 and discussed in t he following sections. overall results tend to confirm conclusions obtained from qualitative research about the ambivalent nature of respondents feelings.As far as the concept itself is concerned for example, a majority of respondents considers that luxury is synonymous with good taste, is pleasant, not old-fashioned and useful but also sporty and too expensive for what it is. When commenting on their personal reverberance to luxury, most respondents express a positive attitude (I ilk luxury, Im raise in luxury, lavishness makes me dream, sumptuosity products make life more beautiful) but also declare their relative leave out of expertise (I bustt know much about it, I could not talk about it for hours) and infrequent purchase activity (I more or less never buy luxury products).When asked (in a projective mode) to comment on others behavior, a vast majority subscribes to the he come inic motive ( angiotensin-converting enzyme buys luxury goods primarily for ones joy) an d refutes the snobbish argument, but more than 50% of those who express an opinion consider that people who buy luxury products seek to imitate the rich and, on issues wish people who buy luxury goods try to pit themselves from others or people who buy luxury products are refined people the sample is totally divided.Similarly, one out of two respondents does not support the imagination of a heavier tax but one out of 3 welcomes such a proposal In order to improve our understanding of the underlying attitudinal coordinate, correlativity and principal component analyses were performed. Rather than displaying the full 34 x 34 correlation matrix, not informal to read (1156 coefficients), we decided to attempt to graphically represent the underlying structure, even though we recognize that it is not always possible to completely eliminate notion in positioning the items on the resulting map.Figure 1 depicts the map obtained when only intercorrelations higher than 0. 4 are conside red. To make it easier to read and to interpret, all items which imply a favorable predisposition towards luxury are positioned on the left side of the figure while ban statements appear on the right side. Coefficients between 0. 40 and 0. 50 are indicated by dotted lines while solid lines correspond to correlations above 0. 50. Obviously, all coefficients are statistically significant. It appears that the backbone of perceptions and attitudes evolves around the attraction-avoidance dimension mentioned previously.The two attitudinal statements I wish well luxury and Im not interested in luxury butt a strong (negative) correlation, with an absolute value which is the highest one in the whole matrix. From such a map, a number of conclusions can be drawn 1. there are two basic reasons underlying the drop of interest in luxury. The first one is a negative perception of the luxury world, considered in an absolute, general and abstract sense. Those who adopt this perspective tend t o describe luxury goods as useless, old-fashioned, too expensive and flashy.Since they fail to see much value in luxury items, they do not develop an zest for them. 2. The game reason is more tie in to a sensed lack of fit between the individual and luxury. Those who feel this absence of connivence tend to explain it in terms of their own inexpertise, their uneasiness with luxury environss and an impression of artificiality when they bore their luxury items (in case they own some). All those factors logically result in a minimal elaboration in both interest for luxury goods and acquisition behavior. 3. Although not reported on the map, the correlations between, on the one hand, those two sets of items and, on the other hand, the group of three statements link up to the perceived reasons why others buy luxury goods (located at the extreme right of the figure) are statistically significant, typically in the 0. 20 0. 40 range.Those who dont feel at ease with luxury goods and admit their incompetence also tend to intrust that others buy luxury items to imitate the rich or to differentiate themselves from the rest of the population. www. acrwebsite. org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx? Id=11539 2/4 3/4/13 Attitudes Towards the Concept of lavishness an Exploratory Analysis by Bernard Dubois and Gilles Laurent Those who believe that luxury goods are too expensive and flashy have a similar perception of the behavior of others. merely the factors underlying such perceptions are not the same for both groups. objet dart the former find one more reason to deepen the gap which separates them from the world of luxury, it looks as if the latter have one more justification in support of their disdain of an environment perceived as sterile and futile.4. The two mechanisms underlying disinterest have their counterparts on the positive (left hand) side. Although not shown on the map, the correlation between I like luxury and I could talk about it for hours is highly significant (0. 32). People who like luxury also are people who feel knowledgeable about it, both in terms of expertise and familiarity (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987). The luxury world is their world and they move in it like a fish in water, as revealed by their strong opposition to the statement I almost never buy luxury goods. 5. But the appetite for luxury goods can be also developed on a more abstract and symbolic dimension (upper left corner). Those who adopt this viewpoint see the luxury word as a ancestor of fascination and enlightment. sumptuousness products make them dream and contribute, in their opinion, to a more beautiful life. This ethereal perception of luxury is also the most hedonic of all in nature, as revealed by the strong correlations obtained with the items related to pleasure. Luxury becomes a permanent source of ecstasy and happiness, almost a goal for life, far beyond transient fads and fashions.All these facets of luxury are well confirmed by the rotated factor structure. Applying the varimax force to the table of intercorrelations yields the matrix reproduced in Table 2. decennium factors were extracted explaining about 60% of the variance. While the last hexad correspond to specific items (or pairs of items) not directly linked with the core attitudinal structure but useful to instance such topics as price perceptions and their consequences (Factor 5), or the scarcity issue (Factor 6), the first four correspond rather closely to the structure discussed previously.Factor 1 expresses the lack of interest due to limited expertise and familiarity, while Factor 2 corresponds to the positive evaluation of luxury goods fostered by hedonistic motives. Factor 3 summarizes the negative perceptions attached to the behavior of others and Factor 4 corresponds to the fab and symbolic values attached to the luxury cigarette tale. Taken together, these four factors contribute to a better understanding of the underlying structure an d can be helpful for someone interested in developing a short scale mean to measure attitudes toward the concept of luxury.As an illustration, the factorial structure of a subset of twelve items appears on Table 3 and is rather straightforward in its interpretation While the first factor corresponds to perceptions related to the concept of Luxury in general, factor 2 expresses a more personal rapport to luxury, and the remaining two factors describe attitudes towards those who consume luxury items. CONCLUSIONS Despite the importance and growth of the luxury sector, the determinants of luxury acquisition and consumption have received very little assist in the consumer research literature.There is a distinct lack of systematic studies to model and test the processes whereby individuals develop an appetite for the world of luxury (or fail to do so). FIGURE 1 (/volumes/ap01/01276f01. gif) TABLE 2 (/volumes/ap01/01277t02. gif) (/volumes/ap01/01277t02. gif) promoter STRUCTURE (/volum es/ap01/01277t02. gif) Given its exploratory nature, the present research only represents a first step in the development of a model of luxury acquisition and consumption. Only the attitudes towards the concept in general have been investigated here.The dual nature of those attitudes has emerged as a major conclusion of both qualitative and quantitative data The structure of peoples predispositions towards luxury, as a concept, are affected both by their perception of the luxury world in general and their perceived personal fit with such a world. future studies could investigate 1) the socio-demographic and psychographic elements associated with such predispositions 2) the role of specific product categories in the development of attitudes towards luxury and 3) the evolution of these predispositions over time.A program of research on individually of these topics is being conducted by the authors and its results will be reported in future contributions. TABLE 3 (/volumes/ap01/0127 8t03. gif) (/volumes/ap01/01278t03. gif) A TWELVE ITEM ATTITUDINAL SCALE ON THE CONCEPT OF LUXURY (/volumes/ap01/01278t03. gif) REFERENCES Alba, Joseph, W. and J. 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