Consumer Segments Based on Attitudes Toward Luxury: Empirical Evidence from Twenty Countries
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Consumer Segments Based on Attitudes Toward Luxury: Empirical Evidence from Twenty Countries BERNARD DUBOIS HEC School of Management SANDOR CZELLAR ∗ HEC School of Management, 78350 Jouy-en-Josas, France
[email protected]
GILLES LAURENT HEC School of Management
Abstract This article proposes an international segmentation of consumers based on their attitudes toward luxury. We perform a two-stage empirical study with a data set that combines samples from 20 countries. We provide a substantive interpretation of the results to show that three attitude segments dominate in a Western cultural context. We discuss several directions for future research based on the findings. Keywords:
luxuries, international marketing research, latent-class segmentation, mixture models
The English “luxury,” the French “luxe,” the Italian “lusso” as well as the Spanish and Portuguese “lujo” are all derived from the Latin term “luxus.” According to the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1992), “luxus” signifies “soft or extravagant living, (over-)indulgence” and “sumptuousness, luxuriousness, opulence.” From the beginning of human history, luxury has been present in diverse forms of consumption practices. Its role was just as important in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome as it is in modern societies (Berry, 1994). In contemporary marketing usage, “luxury” refers to a specific tier of offer in almost any product or service category. Throughout the twentieth century, research has been conducted on luxury in diverse disciplines, including historical analysis (e.g. Berry, 1994), econometric modeling (e.g. Bagwell and Bernheim, 1996; Coelho and McClure, 1993), economic psychology (e.g. Braun and Wicklund, 1989; Leibenstein, 1950; Mason, 1981; Veblen, 1899) and marketing (e.g. Dubois and Laurent, 1993; Kivetz and Simonson, 2002a, b). Despite the substantial body of knowledge accumulated during the past decades, research on the topic of consumer attitudes toward luxury is still scarce. The topic is important since insights on attitude types toward luxury and their distribution in a target market are essential for the positioning of upscale brands. To fill this knowledge gap, the article proposes an investigation into attitudes toward luxury in twenty countries. ∗
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DUBOIS, CZELLAR AND LAURENT
The article is organized as follows. We start with an exploratory inquiry, the purpose of which is item generation for a scale to assess consumer attitudes toward luxury. We use this scale to investigate attitudes toward luxury in 20 countries and propose a segmentation of consumers based on their attitudes. We highlight cultural variations in consumer attitudes toward luxury, thereby confirming that our framework is applicable— and limited—to a Western cultural context. An agenda for future research concludes the article.
1.
An Exploratory Study
We first conducted an in-depth inquiry in the form of an interpretive analysis of consumer experiences with luxury. The approach was discovery oriented, with the aim of developing a corpus of atti
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