Identifying the Luxury Sustainability Paradox: Three Steps Toward a Solution
In this chapter, we argue about a paradox of sustainability in the context of luxury goods and brands: Intuitively, luxury brands should be more sustainable versus normal brands, since consumer’s willingness to pay is high which should allow for highest s
- PDF / 656,485 Bytes
- 20 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 40 Downloads / 243 Views
Abstract In this chapter, we argue about a paradox of sustainability in the context of luxury goods and brands: Intuitively, luxury brands should be more sustainable versus normal brands, since consumer’s willingness to pay is high which should allow for highest standards in quality, including sustainability. However, many of the most expensive luxury products appear to exhibit limited sustainability. Examples include sports cars that typically are gas guzzlers, yachts that often carry only a few people but require a high amount of resources to be operated, or fur products that require animals to give their lives for. For example, the Hermes Birkin bag recently received a lot of negative media due to the alleged (mis-)treatment of crocodiles. Hence, albeit a bit counterintuitive, many luxurious products seem less sustainable than they could and probably should these days causing what we call the “Luxury Sustainability Paradox” to surface. In essence, luxury products’ superiority appears to not span across all attributes and, paradoxically, to do so may be very challenging if not impossible. In short: being at the absolute top along certain luxury or performance attributes may, paradoxically, preclude top scores on sustainability.
Keywords Luxury Sustainability paradox Managerial implications marketing Luxury management Luxurystrategy
Luxury
In the chapter we aim to significantly broaden the scope of luxury research aspects by dissecting the following: • Ambiguous Meaning of Luxury—Blurred Aspects of the “Luxury Sustainability Paradox”. • Behavioral aspects from a luxury consumer perspective. O.P. Heil (&) Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany e-mail: [email protected] D.A. Langer Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Scottsdale, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 M.A. Gardetti (ed.), Sustainable Management of Luxury, Environmental Footprints and Eco-design of Products and Processes, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2917-2_6
125
126
• • • •
O.P. Heil and D.A. Langer
Is there a consumer paradigm shift and how can it be leveraged? How to create Added Luxury Value with Sustainable Luxury? Description of durability, ownership vs consumption effects. Competitive Advantage Through Sustainability.
Luxury goods are distinctive from “normal” goods. Through our findings we provide managers with comprehensive toolsets and strategies to manage luxury in a more competitive, profitable and sustainable way.
1 The Paradox Between Luxury and Sustainability Luxury is an elusive concept that relatively few seem to truly grasp and understand. Why is this the case? Unfortunately, the term “luxury” is typically used with a lack of precision and clear definition. After all, it seems clear to everybody what luxury really means. But is that really the case? We suggest just to do a Google search on keywords and images and you will find a whopping variety of things under the label “luxury”: From very cheap to very expensive items across a variety of topics and cate
Data Loading...
