No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Managing the luxury shopping experience: implications for retail channels
... For example, luxury has the potential for numerous multi-actor touchpoints as luxury shopping often takes place in a social context (see Verhoef et al., 2009) and many luxury goods are purchased to satisfy social needs (Amaldoss & Jain, 2005;Belk, 1988). Customers frequently view visits to luxury boutiques as social experiences with friends (Schweiger, Grewal, Roggeveen, & Beitelspacher, 2020). Thus, a multi-actor perspective represents an opportunity for luxury brands to engage its customers more. ...
... Responding to calls for more research on how digitization allows luxury brands to engage customers (Dubois, 2020;Schweiger et al., 2020), we explore the potential role of technology in luxury service encounters. As luxury is a social construct (Roper, Caruana, Medway, & Murphy, 2013) and "intimately tied to the dynamics of living together" (Kapferer, 2010, p. 42), we draw on the specifics of luxury services to argue that understanding and enhancing the multiple interactions and the infusion of technology are vital for luxury brands to align their service encounters with evolving customer needs. ...
Luxury brands have been reluctant to adopt technology-enhanced multi-actor interactions at the customer interface. This article synthesizes research on luxury and multi-actor interactions in non-luxury contexts to explore how luxury brands can adopt digitally enabled multi-actor service encounters. The literature is further supplemented by interviews with managers in luxury firms. Our findings caution against simply adopting approaches from non-luxury contexts as they risk undermining the luxury service experience. Rather, we develop a set of propositions at the intersections of the physical, digital, and social realms on how luxury brands can adapt the use of digital multi-actor interactions to augment rather than imperil their brand image. Specifically, our propositions help luxury managers to enhance the customer experience through hedonic escapism, strengthen their brand communities, and use digitization to simultaneously provide conspicuous customers with greater visibility and discreet customers with social exclusivity.
... Turning to the type of product, we consider luxury versus standard products. In-store communication is essential for luxury stores because the visual elements in the retail atmosphere communicate a luxury appeal to customers (Schweiger et al., 2020). The store environment itself, including large empty spaces (Dion & Borraz, 2017), classical music (Areni & Kim, 1993), and warm ambient scents (Madzharov et al., 2015), implicitly conveys a luxury appeal to customers. ...
This research examines how retailers convey messages to target customers and facilitate purchase decisions in physical settings. To establish a clear organizing framework for communications in physical settings, the current article examines both how and why retailers communicate with customers. Specifically, the authors address “how” questions from the perspective of whether messages are static or dynamic and “why” questions according to whether the communication is inspirational or informative.
... Authors focusing on individual perceptions observe varying levels of luxuriousness (Miller & Mills, 2012) depending on consumers' accumulated direct or indirect experiences with products, services, and the behavior of company representatives (Hennigs, Wiedmann, Behrens, & Klarmann, 2013). Again, other authors approach luxury as a social construct (Roper, Caruana, Medway, & Murphy, 2013) with diverse social meanings that depend on the reflection of personal use (Mandler, Johnen, & Grävem, 2020) or social consumption experiences (Dubois, 2020;Schweiger, Grewal, Roggeveen, & Beitelspacher, 2020) stimulated by brand characteristics (Keller, 2009) in specific social and temporal contexts. Recent research has conceived of luxury as an individual or social experience of escaping or caretaking (Banister, Roper, & Potavanich, 2020) in scarce, exciting moments (Holmqvist, Diaz-Ruiz et al., 2020) in contrast to mundane life, making individuals feel free and happy (Von Wallpach, Hemetsberger, . ...
Research on luxury service ecosystems (LSEs) is in its infancy. LSEs consist of a continuous multiplicity of formally independent yet interdependent actors who align unique and super-modular complementary resources to co-create value with other participants in the system. The purpose of this research is to understand how complex LSEs can be established and made sufficiently resilient to successfully persist in changing or even disruptive contexts over time. A longitudinal analysis of secondary sources and interviews with currently leading actors concerning the development of the LSE of Monaco over a period of nearly 160 years reveals the high importance of joint leadership of a private and a public actor, a strong enduring vision that engages stakeholders, and stable macro-level institutional arrangements that provide a framework for collaborative adaptations and transformation of the ecosystem’s servicescape and service encounters in reaction to ongoing and disruptive changes in the socio-historical context.
... The company's journey and challenges up to the year 2018 suggests the strategist's good lessons. In May 2014, Bailey took the role of chief creative and president of the company, with Riccardo Tisci succeeding his position in February 2018: Both of these legends have supported the historic British brand to sustain the business to attract new fans in the global market (Schweiger et al., 2020). ...
This study explores the Burberry apparel brand’s position and its strategic behaviour seeking new customers in the new market. This exploratory research pays particular attention to business potential and opportunities in an emerging market, Vietnam. To evaluate Burberry’s strategies and the potential, the collaborative network relationships are discussed in details, that is followed by the discussion of the key themes for Burberry to consider in the Vietnamese market, where Burberry has recently begun expanding its businesses. The outcome of the study suggests that the Western luxury brand apparel needs to understand the targeted markets’ systems and consumer behaviour, from there it is inevitable to design strategic plan how to engage the stakeholders in the ubiquitous supply chain relationships. In the end, a conceptual model with network perspectives is proposed: The model will be an analytical framework with key agenda items for the luxury brand which aims to enter the new market, and also the research limitations and further research opportunities are discussed.
Academic literature retains a dearth of empirical evidence of the cutting-edge aspect of artificial intelligence
(AI)-powered digital assistance and digital multisensory cues, despite the prospect of these factors on real-life
customers’ luxury brand online shopping experience. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine the significant
pathway and effects of AI-powered digital assistance toward customers’ luxury brand online shopping experience.
Drawing on S–O-R (Stimulus, organism, and response) and TRAM (Technology Readiness and Acceptance
Model) paradigm, a multi-method research design was deployed to investigate constructs. Firstly, semistructured
interviews were utilized to explore customers’ online behavior under the luxury brands and information
technology aspect. Secondly, survey data were collected and analyzed by using partial least squares
structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The PLS-based
analysis of quantitative data confirmed the exploratory insights of qualitative findings, establishing the connections
of AI-powered digital assistance, customer engagement, and customers’ luxury brand online shopping
experience. Research findings also suggest that customer engagement plays a mediation role in the relationship
between AI-powered digital assistance and customers’ luxury brand online shopping experience. Besides, digital
multisensory cues moderate the relationship between AI-powered digital assistance and customer engagement.
Further, fsQCA complements the findings of PLS-SEM that reveal the significant combination of factors that lead
to the perceptions of customers’ luxury brand online shopping experience.
This study explores the Burberry apparel brand’s position and its strategic behaviour seeking new customers in the new market. This exploratory research pays particular attention to business potential and opportunities in an emerging market, Vietnam. To evaluate Burberry’s strategies and the potential, the collaborative network relationships are discussed in details, that is followed by the discussion of the key themes for Burberry to consider in the Vietnamese market, where Burberry has recently begun expanding its businesses. The outcome of the study suggests that the Western luxury brand apparel needs to understand the targeted markets’ systems and consumer behaviour, from there it is inevitable to design strategic plan how to engage the stakeholders in the ubiquitous supply chain relationships. In the end, a conceptual model with network perspectives is proposed: The model will be an analytical framework with key agenda items for the luxury brand which aims to enter the new market, and also the research limitations and further research opportunities are discussed.
Although a large body of research investigates how consumers use goods to signal their status, little is known about how brands manage status. The very few studies that do look at this are grounded in the traditional conception of status and focus on the possession and display of status signals. The authors offer an alternative understanding of status management by investigating the role of interactions in the service encounter. Drawing from extensive ethnographic work in luxury stores, they investigate how brands (re)configure the status games that surface in the service encounter. They show that through the material and social cues of the servicescape, brands shape consumers' class subjectivities, that is, they make consumers behave as class subjects who have a specific understanding of their position in the social hierarchy. Thus, managing status requires the active creation and management of consumers as class subjects. There is a shift from managing branded goods that signal status to managing customer experiences that make consumers enact status positions. This research enables the identification of new ways to manage status brands, especially luxury brands
Retail atmospherics Is emerging as a major competitive tool, and It Is especially notable in the restaurant industry, where lighting is used to create the overall ambience and influence consumer experience. In addition to influencing overall experience, can ambient light luminance have unintended consequences in terms of influencing what diners order? The results of a field study at multiple locations of a major restaurant chain and a series of lab studies robustly show that consumers tend to choose less healthy food options when ambient lighting is dim (vs. bright). Process evidence suggests that this phenomenon occurs because ambient light luminance influences mental alertness, which in turn influences food choices. While restaurant and grocery store managers can use these insights and their ambient light switches to nudge consumers toward targeted food choices, such as healthy or high-margin signature items, health-conscious consumers can opt for dining environments with bright ambient lighting.
Status consumption has recently sparked the interest of many researchers in consumer behavior and marketing. This chapter delineates the relationship between social hierarchy and social status, offers a multi-disciplinary review of recent research in the area, and outlines the most promising avenues for future research. In the first part of the chapter we describe the basic principles of social hierarchy and status. We adopt a holistic view of social status and review the defining dimensions of status signals as well as the broad consequences of having or lacking status. We then describe how social hierarchies shape status attainment and maintenance. In the second part of the chapter, we focus on status processes embedded in consumer contexts. Specifically, we introduce the notion of status consumption and define its main roles – associative, dissociative, compensatory, and uncertainty-reducer. We then review recent findings on the antecedents or consequences of status consumption. In the final section we propose several promising directions for future research on the psychology and economics of status. Given that consumer settings are natural areas for the creation, growth and use of status signals, the marketplace constitutes a particularly well-suited field of investigation for status research.
Luxury retail strategy differs from other retail strategies not merely in distinctive formulations of product, price, distribution, and appeals to customer distinction. Instead, it increasingly stands or falls on the legitimacy of a charismatic creative director. The director offers an aesthetic brand ideology. Luxury retail draws on the principles of art and magic to assemble the charismatic persona of the creative director and to diffuse his aesthetic ideology to the brand. Moreover, luxury retail strategy enlists magical and aesthetic principles within and without the store to achieve these ends. Finally, retail luxury is producer rather than consumer oriented and seeks to generate awe rather than community. This strategy appears to be to some extent a response to legitimacy crises provoked by recent strategic extensions of luxury brands into mass marketing. We offer some implications for marketing in which the charisma of a key personage is at stake.
Research on how store environment cues influence consumers' store choice decision criteria, such as perceived merchandise value and shopping experience costs, is sparse. Especially absent is research on the simultaneous impact of multiple store environment cues. The authors propose a comprehensive store choice model that includes (1) three types of store environment cues (social, design, and ambient) as exogenous constructs, (2) various store choice criteria (including shopping experience costs that heretofore have not been included in store choice models) as mediating constructs, and (3) store patronage intentions as the endogenous construct. They then empirically examine the extent to which environmental cues influence consumers' assessments of a store on various store choice criteria and how those assessments, in turn, influence patronage intentions. The results of two different studies provide support for the model. The authors conclude by discussing the results to develop an agenda for additional research and explore managerial implications.
Our study contrasts status-seeking consumers with role-relaxed consumers across personal, social influence, and market influence factors. The results of a survey of 598 consumers supported all but four of 15 hypotheses. The findings suggest that status-seeking consumers: (1) tend to conform to group norms, yet (2) maintain a need for uniqueness, (3) are susceptible to normative, but not necessarily informational interpersonal influence, (4) can be opinion leaders, but not necessarily opinion seekers, and (5) have tendencies that contrast sharply with role-relaxed consumer tendencies. In contrast, role-relaxed consumers: (1) do not generally conform to group norms, (2) are typically not susceptible to informational nor normative interpersonal influence, (3) do not pay attention to social comparison information, (4) are neither opinion leaders nor opinion seekers, and (5) have tendencies that contrast sharply with status consumer tendencies.
215 *Gerald J. Gorn is Professor of Marketing and Senior Wei-Lun Fellow (e-mail: mkgorn@ust.hk), and Jaideep Sengupta is Associate Professor of Marketing (e-mail: mkjaisen@ust.hk), School of Business and Manage-ment, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Amitava Chat-topadhyay is L'Oreal Chaired Professor of Marketing Innovation and Cre-ativity, INSEAD (The authors investigate the link between the color of a Web page's background screen while the page is downloading and the perceived quickness of the download. They draw on research that supports links between color and feelings of relaxation and between feelings of relax-ation and time perception. The authors predict that the background screen color influences how quickly a page is perceived to download and that feelings of relaxation mediate this influence. In a series of experi-ments, they manipulate the hue, value, and chroma dimensions of the color to induce more or less relaxed feeling states. The findings suggest that for each dimension, colors that induce more relaxed feeling states lead to greater perceived quickness. The authors provide triangulating evidence with an alternative manipulation: the number of times subjects wait for a download. As does color, this also leads to variation in levels of relaxation and perceived quickness. A final experiment reveals that color not only affects perceived download quickness but also has conse-quences for users' evaluations of the Web site and their likelihood of recommending it to others.
Mood and emotional elements of advertising and consumer response have received increasing attention from practitioners and scholars in recent years. Among the various sources of mood induction is the frequently used practice of accompanying commercial messages with background music. This paper extends marketing's discussion of the role of music in influencing audiences, by using music theory to analyze and investigate the effects of music's structural profiles on consumers. The experiment's results indicate that music may have significant impact on audience moods and purchase intentions, without necessarily affecting intervening cognitions.
Consumers purchase conspicuous goods to satisfy not only material needs but also social needs such as prestige. In an attempt to meet these social needs, producers of conspicuous goods like cars, perfumes, and watches, highlight the exclusivity of their products. In this paper, we propose a monopoly model of conspicuous consumption using the rational expectations framework, and then examine how purchase decisions are affected by the desire for exclusivity and conformity. We show that snobs can have an upward-sloping demand curve but only in the presence of consumers who are (weakly) followers. Laboratory tests lend support for this model prediction and for the rational expectations framework. The experimental results suggest that subjects used some degree of sophisticated thinking to arrive at their first-period decisions. Their behavior in the subsequent trials, however, can be adequately captured by a purely adaptive learning mechanism. We discuss the implications of consumer learning for optimal dynamic pricing policy by a monopolist.
This research introduces “brand prominence,” a construct reflecting the conspicuousness of a brand's mark or logo on a product. The authors propose a taxonomy that assigns consumers to one of four groups according to their wealth and need for status, and they demonstrate how each group's preference for conspicuously or inconspicuously branded luxury goods corresponds predictably with their desire to associate or dissociate with members of their own and other groups. Wealthy consumers low in need for status want to associate with their own kind and pay a premium for quiet goods only they can recognize. Wealthy consumers high in need for status use loud luxury goods to signal to the less affluent that they are not one of them. Those who are high in need for status but cannot afford true luxury use loud counterfeits to emulate those they recognize to be wealthy. Field experiments along with analysis of market data (including counterfeits) support the proposed model of status signaling using brand prominence.
This paper explores the effects of multi-sensory congruent cues om shoppers’ emotions and purchase behavior in designing retail store atmosphere. Prior research suggests atmospheric stimuli to contribute to establish an appealing atmosphere and studies have confirmed that shoppers react to different stimuli. However, extant studies have not examined how multi-sensory congruent cues added to a visually dominant store atmosphere might impact shopper emotions and purchase behavior. The findings demonstrate a positive effect of multi-sensory congruent cues on shoppers’ emotions, through valence, and purchase behavior, through time spent and purchase. It is evident that shoppers perceive multi-sensory cues, such as auditory and olfactory ones, to be more effective in a dominant visual store atmosphere compared to only adding new visual stimuli. For retailers, a visually dominant store atmosphere should be designed more in the direction of a multi-sensory atmosphere in offering shoppers more appealing experiences of the retail setting.
Points out that identifying appropriate market segmentation bases
has been a recurrent problem in marketing. Compares the predictive power
of income and attitude towards cultural change in the context of luxury
goods. The results show that those two indicators are rather independent
from each other and contribute almost equally to explaining luxury goods
consumption.
This research proposes a feelings-based account of brand extension evaluation and demonstrates that the promise of pleasure (hedonic potential) associated with luxury brands is a key driver of brand extendibility. In four studies, we contrast a luxury brand with a value brand. Both brand concepts lead to equally favorable brand evaluations, but the luxury brand concept results in more favorable brand extension evaluations due to the hedonic potential inherent in this concept. However, the luxury brand is shown to be sensitive to inconsistent brand cues, leading to diminished hedonic potential and consequently decreased brand and brand extension evaluations. The legendary Scheherazade of Arabian Nights fame kept herself from being beheaded by the promise of pleasure from her fascinating stories. She enraptured the king, who typically executed his virgin wives after one night of being with them, by telling him a story that made him eagerly anticipate her next exciting new story, night after night, for one thousand and one nights. The promise of pleasure is indeed powerful, and evokes in us the motivation to re-experience pleasurable feelings again and again. We draw inspiration from this tale to investigate how, like Scheherazade, luxury brands make a similar promise of pleasure, not only for the experience of that product alone but also for other products that bear the same brand name. The central thesis of this research is that luxury brands are more extendible than value brands by virtue of their hedonic potential, or, in other words, their promise of pleasure.
Many factors, both obvious and subtle, influence customers’ store patronage intentions. Using videotape technology that enabled us to experimentally manipulate the number of visible store employees, number of customers, and music, we test the relative importance of wait expectations and store atmosphere evaluations on patronage intentions. These constructs are found to be critical antecedents of store patronage intentions in the context of the service-intensive retail store at which the model was tested. We also find support for the direct effects of gender on wait expectations and store atmosphere evaluations. We discuss some implications for retailing research and practice.
With the growing realization that brands are one of a firm's most valuable intangible assets, branding has emerged as a top management priority in the last decade. Given its highly competitive nature, branding can be especially important in the retailing industry to influence customer perceptions and drive store choice and loyalty. We integrate lessons from branding and retail image research to provide a better understanding of how retailers create their brand images, paying special attention to the role of the manufacturer and private label brand assortment. We also highlight some important areas that deserve further research in the form of three sets of research priorities.
A typology of service organizations is presented and a conceptual framework is advanced for exploring the impact of physical surroundings on the behaviors of both customers and employees. The ability of the physical surroundings to facilitate achievement of organizationa l as well as marketing goals is ex- plored. Literature from diverse disciplines provides theoretical grounding for the framework, which serves as a base for focused propositions. By examining the multiple strategic roles that physical surroundings can exert in service organizations, the author highlights key managerial and research implications.
A shortcoming of Internet-based retailing efforts is consumers' inability to touch products during their purchase decision-making processes. This research is a preliminary effort to examine the construct of need for tactile input by consumers and its impact on the likelihood to purchase products over the Internet. Initial measurement of the construct is developed through a survey of 272 respondents. This consumer characteristic is then shown to impact negatively the purchase of products on the Internet, particularly those requiring more tactile cues for their evaluation. Further, women showed a higher need for tactile input compared to men in making product evaluations. Strategic implications of the importance of considering consumers' need for tactile input for Internet retailers are provided.
Luxury Brand Management: A World of Privilege
- Michel Chevalier
Chevalier, Michel (2012), Luxury Brand Management: A World of Privilege, 2nd Edition
(1st edition. ed.): John Wiley & Sons.
Luxury retail management: How the world's top brands provide quality product and service support
- Michel Chevalier
- Michel Gutsatz
Chevalier, Michel and Michel Gutsatz (2012), Luxury retail management: How the world's
top brands provide quality product and service support: John Wiley & Sons.
Gobbetti Lays Out Vision for Burberry
- Samantha Conti
Conti, Samantha (2017), "Gobbetti Lays Out Vision for Burberry," WWD: Women's Wear
Daily, 1-3.
How Moda Operandi's Menswear Strategy Is Taking Shape Under New Leadership
- Mario Abad
Abad, Mario (2019), "How Moda Operandi's Menswear Strategy Is Taking Shape Under
New Leadership," Forbes, Forbes Magazine, [available at
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marioabad/2019/04/17/moda-operandi-mens-joshpeskowitz/#3559aa1a2ca2].