The luxury strategy pdf download

The authors and contributors examine the evolution of luxury strategy and how the luxury industry is being redefined in the twenty-first century. The Luxury Strategy is the definitive work on the essence of a luxury brand strategy. It puts an end to the confusion around the term, and explains the fundamental differences between 'premium', 'fashion', and 'luxury' strategies.

Based on an analysis of the social functions of luxury, of worldwide best practices and on first hand direct experience, it sets out the rules for success, and turns established marketing rules upside down.

The Luxury Strategy provides the first rigorous blueprint for the effective management of luxury brands and companies at the highest level, including human resources and financial management. It also unveils the original methods that were used to transform small family businesses such as Ferrari, Cartier, Chanel, Gucci, and Ralph Lauren into profitable global brands.

This book addresses the No 1 challenge of all major luxury brands today: How can these brands pursue their growth yet remain luxury? How do you reconcile growth and rarity? Each chapter addresses a specific issue relating to the luxury growth challenge such as sustaining the 'luxury dream', adapting the internet to luxury demands, re-widening the gap with premium brands' competition, and the importance of non-delocalization.

It also explores in detail facing the demand of the Chinese clients, rising sustainable quality and experiential standards, developing real luxury services and managing luxury brands within groups without diluting their equity and more. As such, Kapferer on Luxury is the perfect and timely resource for luxury executives, communication managers, luxury observers and advanced students willing to deepen their understanding of this major luxury challenge.

Discover the meaning of the latest trends in the luxury industry with this resource from leading voices in the field The thoroughly revised Second Edition of The Road to Luxury: The New Frontiers in Luxury Brand Management delivers a comprehensive overview of the foundations of, and new developments in, luxury brands. The book discusses a new wave of mergers and acquisitions, the rise of Gucci, the growth of Balenciaga, a variety of new collaborations between different companies, a growing support for sustainability, and the COVID pandemic.

Readers will also benefit from the inclusion of: An insightful analysis of the impact and meaning of the COVID for the luxury industry, particularly for market growth in China The creation of savoir faire and business plan competitions in the luxury industry LVMH's sponsoring of Viva Technology Perfect for students in MBA programs or taking degrees or courses in Luxury Brand Management, The Road to Luxury will also earn a place in the libraries of executives and managers in the luxury business, marketing, branding, and advertising professionals and companies, and entrepreneurs interested in the workings of the luxury industry.

Luxury is in fashion and is now to be found within almost every retail, manufacturing and service sector. New terms qualifying luxury regularly appear such as 'premium', 'ultra-premium' and 'hyperluxe'. Today, luxury is everywhere - but if everything is 'luxury' then surely the term itself has no meaning? What really is a luxury product, a luxury brand or a luxury company? The Luxury Strategy is a definitive new work that sets the record straight. Luxury is as old as humanity and it is only by a thorough understanding of the genuine concept, that it is possible to define a rigorous set of rules for the effective management of luxury brands and products.

The Luxury Strategy rationalizes the management of this new business concept based on the highly original methods that were used to transform small family businesses such as Ferrari, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Chanel, Bulgari, Gucci and Prada, into global brands. The Luxury Strategy explains the difference between 'premium' and 'luxury', and sets out the rules to be applied to the luxury marketing mix the opposite of those for classic marketing.

It describes how to implement a luxury strategy within a company and delivers clear principles for becoming - and remaining - 'luxury'. From these, the authors draw practical conclusions, both on the rules to be applied to the luxury marketing mix, often diametrically opposed to those of classic marketing, and on the specificities of implementing a luxury strategy within a company, both at the financial and the human level.

Far from being simply a descriptive work, it delivers clear principles for becoming and remaining luxury, as well as when and how to depart from luxury, if such is the strategy.

One of the advantages of this work is that the management principles described are applicable well beyond the restricted circle of luxury trades such as we know them today. Luxury is a culture, which means you have to understand it to be able to practice it with flair and spontaneity.

If we want to be able to market luxury, we need first to understand what luxury is all about. Before continuing, therefore, we need to make a brief historical detour.

In order to be able to deduce from them the paradigm of luxury with all its coherent internal rules, you first have to understand its inner dynamics. To the time when our species parted company with its ape ancestors? Perhaps… who knows? Having said that, this question is paradoxically the reason behind this book: wanting to manage a firm specializing in a luxury line efficiently, and finding that tried and tested conventional marketing methods that worked well with standard consumer goods were somehow ineffective — positively harmful even — when applied to luxury products, we needed to find the underlying principle or principles of the mechanics of luxury.

Now, as you delve deeper into the subject it soon becomes apparent that the appeal of luxury is so deeply rooted in human nature that you have to look for its origins a long way back in our history — indulge in a little bit of anthropology, in fact. The origins of luxury It seems legitimate to start from the fact that we bury our dead — proof that we are aware of our own mortality — is what truly sets us apart from animals.

In other words, humanity is as old as the period since we started to bury our dead. And what, apart from skeletons, do we find in these graves? We find objects that with the passage of time are more and more refined, until eventually we start coming across long-lost tombs whose occupants had been buried together with their most precious jewellery and symbols of their power — such as weapons, horses and even ships.

Very soon on a prehistoric timescale it appeared that everyone was desperate not just to bury their loved ones but also to bury along with them the food they would need to survive in the other world, as well as objects that were so much a part of them that they had to accompany them after death. Since the dawn of humanity, then, there have been organized societies, leading groups and, of course, objects, symbols and lifestyles specific to these leading groups.

It is in the appearance of these leading groups and of the symbols and objects specific to them that we need to look for the origins of luxury. If we accept this analysis, luxury is part and parcel of humanity and of life in society.

In the beginning there was luxury 7 Let us come back to this vital aspect to human beings, that is, the certainty that sooner or later they will die, and the question of life after death, because it tells us a great deal about the fundamental and eternal mechanisms at work behind the whole concept of luxury in humankind, both ancient and modern. The moment we become aware of our own mortality, the ultimate in luxury, well beyond any notion of possessions or status, is to be able to live on — and live on comfortably at that — after death.

The case of Ancient Egypt is in fact the most spectacular, for the desert climate of the Nile Valley has miraculously preserved everything for the benefit of future generations. And what do we find? We find the remains of a highly hierarchical and stable society, with its own very precise and extremely sophisticated codes and rules for living; Egypt clearly practised all the codes of luxury, and apparently invented many new techniques for doing this, the bestknown being the discovery of glass to protect perfumes.

Two aspects of this luxury are ever-present: great pomp and splendour during life and a highly ritualistic approach to the afterlife. During life, as in all human society, this splendour was expressed by every available means and spurred the invention of exclusive products such as perfumes, which were reserved for the gods, the Pharaoh, the High Priest and those around them.

After death everything became even more spectacular: the pyramids, the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens… the most sophisticated means, both artistically and technically the building of the pyramids were invented and then applied to ensure that this pomp and splendour lived on in the afterlife.

According to Egyptian beliefs, it was the survival of the body that guaranteed the survival of the soul, and this survival called for some amazing expertise: highly sophisticated techniques had to be developed embalming of mummies, erection of the pyramids or excavation of tombs , which were very costly.

For obvious economic reasons this great luxury was reserved for a very small elite: the Pharaoh, his wife or wives, the High Priest and a select few important dignitaries. Besides, the recent discoveries around the Giza plateau have forced us to exchange the conventional image of the pyramids built by slaves subjected to ceaseless lashing for one in which they were in fact raised by resourceful engineers and a skilful workforce: the luxury of the Pharaohs was not built on slavery but on the expertise of those who were not only capable but also free.

The rivalry between these two city states went on for centuries and has been thoroughly explored by numerous historians. In classical Italy, when the military might of Rome was able to shield the city from its external enemies, it was the conflict between the supporters of the Republic, its austerity and its belief in Virtus Cato the Elder being the principal evangelist of this position, with the famous sumptuary law, the Lex Oppia, passed in BC and repealed in BC , on one side, and on the other those advocating a more elegant and sophisticated Republic.

It was the latter group that eventually emerged victorious, and Imperial Rome will forever be remembered for its refinement and luxury. The bitterness and the recurrence of this conflict between two fundamentally different kinds of society one warlike, masculine and austere, the other pacifist, feminine and sophisticated , with a definite taking of sides for or against luxury even culminating in civil war, shows just how important is the idea of luxury. And these conflicts were not confined just to classical antiquity — not even to the Western world: sumptuary laws have been around for thousands of years, both in periods of relative social stability the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan, —, or the reign of Elizabeth I of England and in periods of serious In the beginning there was luxury 9 social unrest for example, the French Wars of Religion in the latter half of the 16th century.

However, we shall not be elaborating any further on this period of history those interested are referred to the outstanding book by Christopher J Berry entitled The Idea of Luxury Without ever reaching quite the same degree of violence, whether actual or legal, this conflict has been going on for all time in human society everywhere see also p.

In other words, the concept of luxury is not a socially neutral one; quite the contrary as, in a manner of speaking, it is society that defines what luxury is. This is true of all societies, even contemporary ones: in addition to the timehonoured methods of deterrence, we have a veritable arsenal of taxes to determine whether a product is a luxury item or not… in fact, this is often the best way of arriving at such a definition!

Following the Industrial Revolution, which brought about a considerable rise in living standards, more and more individuals found themselves with the financial means to afford luxuries. The beginnings of female emancipation, which would not percolate all strata of society until the middle of the 20th century, could already be seen at work in the 19th.

We have already seen that it was the pacifist, feminine societies that most readily and completely accepted luxury. As the 20th century progressed, the situation gradually turned in favour of the social legitimization of luxury. Today, this process of legitimization is not yet complete, even in developed societies, but it is irreversible.

We are now going to look more closely at this sociological evolution and its consequences, and in particular at what we shall call the driving forces behind luxury. The 20th century and the democratization of luxury Let us go back to Darwin: one could compare the world of luxury until the turn of the 20th century to the animal population of a large island, long isolated from the rest of the world as South America once was, or as Madagascar and Tasmania are today , and on which a varied and totally original fauna has developed in a specific ecosystem.

One fine day, due to continental drift or falling sea levels, a spit of land joins this island to the continent; suddenly, the fauna on this island find that they have all this vast space into which to expand, but at the same time have to compete with much larger fauna that have adapted to their own ecosystem.

In what way do the new fauna need to evolve in order to conquer new territory? Which species are going to disappear, and why? Is hybridization going to lead to the appearance of successful new species? Let us pursue the analogy: since the dawn of humanity right up to the turn of the 19th century, the world of luxury has been virtually totally isolated from the rest of the economy, its pleasures and delights reserved for a very small elite; practically the entire population were living in a subsistence economy, firmly rooted in their rural environment or living a life of misery in towns and cities, without any access to culture.

So this world of luxury, with its In the beginning there was luxury 11 own economic rules, has gradually developed and, over the centuries, acquired a truly idiosyncratic character. From the 20th century onward, this world of luxury gradually ceases to be a world apart. An ever-growing slice of the population is beginning to have access to it, partially at least: an ever-widening spit of land now connects Luxury Island to the continent of the industrial and consumer society.

Luxury can now set out to conquer the world, but at the same time it must overcome fierce competition from industrial products and their sophisticated marketing. It is equally true to say that luxury has to set out to conquer the world as it cannot remain holed up on its small island, otherwise it would disappear, as almost all the endemic South American species have disappeared, failing to adapt to the new situation that resulted from the joining of North America with South America, or as the Australian marsupial fauna are in the process of disappearing following the arrival of the Europeans accompanied by placental mammals.

As it sets out to conquer the world, even though its idiosyncratic nature does not at first really prepare it for such a venture, and even though it has to overcome some powerful adversaries along the way, luxury does hold some major trump cards, with many drivers of social and economic change taking place in the second half of the 20th century working in its favor.

The drivers of change The two fundamental sociological trump cards that luxury have today are, of course, female emancipation though there has always been a market for luxuries among the rich societies, even in those as unfeminist as the Ottoman Empire and world peace however theoretical, but nevertheless publicly proclaimed. These two aces in the hole were boosted in the 20th century by four new and powerful drivers, and in order to understand what is happening today and be able to come up with practical strategies for luxury it is vital to have a detailed understanding of how they work.

Having said that, clearly this fabulous opportunity for luxury carries with it a major risk: that of vulgarization, which is a major trap to be avoided in the process of democratizing luxury we will have occasion to come back to this point quite frequently, especially in the chapters on setting up a luxury strategy. Second, that historical social stratification is gradually disappearing.

The offspring of social stratification in inegalitarian societies, luxury has become its father in democratic societies. There is something very important that needs to be said at this stage: in a democratic society, luxury may lead to social stratification, but it also encourages humanity, something that is often lacking in our modern cities. And it was no less true of medieval villages in Europe, which existed in the shadows of the all-powerful church or cathedral on one side, and of the mansion or palace of the local ruling classes on the other: both symbolic of the total absence of democracy.

In the beginning there was luxury 13 Increase in spending power This is the most obvious driver of the growth in luxury goods: increased spending power means increased availability of money and time both indispensible to luxury, as we will see later. For some products, and for some users, a sharp and non-linear increase in expenditure of money and time: a very large proportion, or even the entirety — or more — of the surplus is spent on a specific activity, occasionally to the detriment of all other activities; this is the notion of bingeing, of extravagant consumption, that we find at the basis of luxury.

Let us assume for the moment that the increase in spending power benefits both luxury products and premium products equally: this particular driver is not luxury-specific. At least to the same extent as democratization, it is a factor in doing away with social stratification. Globalization leads to a levelling out of all cultures and a relativism in all religions: a perfectly globalized society would have just one language and one religion. A luxury product is rooted in a culture.

In buying a Chinese luxury product silk, let us say , you are buying not just a piece of material but a little bit of China as well — a luxury product comes along with a small fragment of its native soil.

This does of course mean that a luxury brand has to stay absolutely true to its roots and be produced in a place that holds some legitimacy for it: by remaining faithful to its origins, the luxury product offers an anchor point in a world of cultural drift, trivialization and deracination.

A luxury brand should not yield to the temptation of relocation, which effectively means dislocation: a relocated product is a soulless product it has lost its identity , even if it is not actually anonymous it still bears a brand name ; it no longer has any business in the world of luxury. We shall be returning to this later and in greater detail, but we need to understand one thing right away: a product whose production centre has been relocated loses its right to be called a luxury product.

A luxury product, which carries a whole world with it, has to be produced in a place that is consistent with its world. The public outcry that arose when Burberry announced that it was closing down one of its production facilities in the UK and moving it to an area with low labour costs in China certainly left its mark! And that is also true of Rolls-Royce, of course. All of that holds especially true when the luxury brand sets out to conquer the world. Now, as we have seen previously this is something it has to do: a luxury brand that cannot go global finishes up disappearing; it is better to have a small nucleus of clients in every country — because there is every chance that it will grow — than a large nucleus in just one country, which could disappear overnight.

If this globalization does bring a luxury brand financial success and durability, the major risk then is that it forgets its roots — like some people who, their own success having gone to their heads, forget or even reject their parents; once separated from its roots, the brand ceases to be a luxury brand and is immediately relegated to the category of just another competitor in consumer goods brands — a battleground for which it is particularly unsuited.

Communications This is the last of the great present-day drivers of change that has an impact on luxury. We shall be coming back later to discuss one of the key consequences of this situation: where the luxury brand becomes the be-all-and-end-all for some individuals, guiding them in their social choices, so much so that sometimes they behave as if they belonged to a sect.

The annual Steve Jobs show at Apple is just like some ancient religious ceremony conducted by a High Priest — just as the purpose behind the sacrificial ceremonies of the Aztecs was to keep the sun in orbit for another cycle, so the Apple Show is designed to reassure its worshippers that revolutionary new products are going to be able to sustain them for one more year.

They will do without almost anything, so long as they can afford the upkeep on their mansion. It was October and the time had come to draw up the budget for the following year — an annual chore for the boss of any large group. The economic situation in China at that time was rapidly going from bad to worse, and a severe cutback in orders for the year to come was predicted; it seemed obvious to him that, in critical times, the health of the Chinese population was going to take precedence over the beauty of its womenfolk, especially in a Communist state.

This proved to be a major error of judgement, because the very opposite occurred! The Communist leaders had understood perfectly that if they kept up supplies of nail varnish in their state-run stores they would be passing along the message that everything was fine… and they could even add that they were reducing their orders for antibiotics because the health of the population had greatly improved!

Besides, people would never know how much antibiotics were used in hospitals anyway. In the beginning there was luxury 17 After decades of monochrome existence, Chinese women at last had the chance to wear bright colours on their nails at least! The stages of change Without dwelling too long on the historical aspect, it is interesting to see how luxury has gradually invaded the modern economy, both in terms of products and activities and on a geographic level.

Now, at the start of the 21st century, luxury has become so popular that everyone or almost everyone wants to be in on it. Luxury is very much in fashion, and almost every economic player is claiming to offer it. If we want a sound basis from which to start defining effective operating strategies, we need to go back to the origins of the concept to find, behind all the claptrap spouted about it, the true signifiers of luxury and what it is all about.

We need to know our place in society. Luxury, then, has a fundamental function of recreating this social stratification. What is more, it does it in a democratic manner, meaning that everyone can recreate up to a certain point their strata according to their dreams — whence a new kind of anxiety, that of freedom: before, the strata In the beginning there was luxury 19 were known and respected; democracy, sexual equality and globalization have led society to lose its points of reference and opened the sluice gates to consumption, but now it lacks any hierarchical codes.

It is the brand that is laying down its law to the consumer — all quite democratically of course! Luxury as a social marker: luxury for others Clearly luxury is a marker, which is why there is such a need for brands. With luxury recreating some degree of social stratification, people in a democracy are therefore free — within the limit of their financial means — to use any of its components to define themselves socially as they wish.

The DNA of luxury, therefore, is the symbolic desire to belong to a superior class, which everyone will have chosen according to their dreams, because anything that can be a social signifier can become a luxury. By the same token, anything that ceases to be a social signifier loses its luxury status. Once, a swimming-pool was a luxury, but it is no longer so. A private elevator still is one, for it harks back to the multistorey private hotel. The codes of luxury are cultural, inasmuch as the luxury brand lies at the confluence between culture and social success.

The elite classes should or are supposed to appreciate luxury for themselves, even if snobs consume in imitation without actually enjoying, or understanding for that matter. Undoubtedly there does exist a consumer market for symbols in answer to the question What makes people rich these days?

The In the beginning there was luxury 21 luxury brand is a cultural thing and as such it has to proclaim its profound truth, the truth that brings us into resonance with it. When it comes to luxury, hedonism takes precedence over functionality. Luxury has to be multisensory: it is not only the appearance of a Porsche that matters but also the sound of it, not only the scent of a perfume but also the beauty of the bottle it comes in. It is multisensory compression.

Luxury for oneself does of course include a strong aesthetic aspect, distinct from its hedonistic component what we find beautiful does not necessarily have to be pleasant. Last but not least — luxury being a social phenomenon, and society being composed of human beings, luxury, whether object or service, must have a strong human content, be of human origin as Karl Marx said about value and labour: gold and diamonds are luxuries and have a high value because it takes a great deal of labour to find and extract them : the object must be hand-made, the service rendered by a human; we shall be dealing with this specific aspect at greater length later.

It is an expression of the perceived quality in all its facets, including reliability, fragility or flimsiness, ease of access, etc, but also the human aspect, the service. The second, called the Luxury Brand Status Index LBSI , is more concerned with the intangible, the prestige associated with the given brand, its dream potential and therefore the distinction conferred on the possessor.

This duality and this ambivalence makes the concept of luxury extremely subjective and variable, both between individuals and between societies; this is the more glaring the better-known the brand and the more visible the product. Let us take the case of Louis Vuitton, for example. Luxury and ethics We shall now briefly consider the boundaries of luxury as a social game and also positive and negative luxury.

In the beginning there was luxury 23 A luxury that is not ethical ceases to be a luxury In this social game of luxury, it is absolutely vital to remain ethical, both with respect to others by avoiding provocation, and with respect to oneself by avoiding addiction; the purpose of luxury as we see it and advocate it is to contribute to social peace and universal happiness, rather than the opposite.

This is why the future of luxury will need to incorporate sustainable concerns too, all along the production process see also page Luxury is to such excessive behaviors what eroticism is to pornography: positive luxury is refinement, nuances, culture, flirtation, pleasure, and not brutality; luxury does of course often manifest itself in abundance, but not overabundance, which leads to saturation and revulsion.

The first suggests someone cultivated and discerning, the second acquisitiveness and excess. At a time when thanks to improved nutrition and advances in medicine we are all living much longer, we have this paradoxical dread of wasting this additional time; we seem obsessed with finding ways of using it instead of enjoying it.

Our society lives under this tyranny of time, having become the society of instant gratification, of the ephemeral, accelerated still further by the modern sources of entertainment, like the movies and TV, imposing their own tempo on the passive viewer, displacing books, which gave us the freedom to make time for reading; expendable starlets and public entertainers have replaced philosophers.

To enjoy luxury you have to devote time to it, and conversely, luxury is an opportunity to enjoy some free time. We shall be dealing in greater detail with this one-dimensionality, this representation of the universe, in the section on luxury and money below. Finally, as we saw earlier, the role of luxury is to recreate social stratification; however, social stratification has a time dimension; consequently luxury, in contrast to fashion, should not be the slave of time but stand aloof from time, or at the very least it should not be dominated by it, and hence the second contradiction of luxury: a luxury item is both timeless and of the here and now.

Put another way, a luxury item has to appear both perfectly modern to the society of the day and at the same time laden with history; one of the conventional ways of dealing with this contradiction is for the brand to In the beginning there was luxury 25 have the stamp of timelessness while the product has every appearance of being modern or vice versa.

Luxury and the consumer society Luxury is of course part and parcel of our present-day consumer society, in which it has found a highly fertile breeding ground. We have seen the extent to which the relationship between luxury and time has differed from the relationship between modern society and time. It is in fact totally opposed to the consumer society on three other major points, as detailed below. The luxury object is durable and even increases in value with time vintage, like a wine or a piece of Louis Vuitton luggage.

It is technically designed to resist wear, uses choice starting materials that time only serves to enhance the patina of old furniture, Vuitton natural cowhide, vintage-wine grape varieties, etc , and is of a design that also will stand the test of time like Ferrari ; thus, the very opposite of an industrially manufactured object, which is expected to wear out and go out of fashion in order to be replaced and keep the production machinery busy — as soon as a new automobile leaves the showroom it loses 30 per cent of its value.

Relationship to people The consumer society is a child of the Industrial Revolution, whose success is essentially due to mechanization, that is to say the replacement of people by machine; its ideal, however noble, is a society of robots to relieve people completely from the tasks of production. You could scarcely find a greater contrast! Here is a good example of this difference: when you gaze from the terrace of a villa overlooking the Gulf of St Tropez at the sumptuous yachts lying lazily swinging at anchor in view of all around, and whose only daily nautical outing is to go from the port to one of the nearby beaches or perhaps a local seafront restaurant before returning to port — there you have a caricatured demonstration of the power of this mimetic phenomenon, which has nothing to do with luxury: the yachts are quite obviously luxury products, and a cruise on one of these yachts in some out-of-the-way archipelago, either alone or in the company of close friends, for many of us would be the height of luxury!

The desire for luxury is based on hedonism and the aesthetic, not on overindulgence leading to saturation and revulsion. The key word when it comes to luxury is dream, not envy. Luxury is about being, for oneself and for others, not about having. The right time for luxury is the time of celebration, the giving of gifts. Money, fashion, art and luxury: boundaries and ambiguities To wind up these remarks about the basics of luxury and be able to go about the practical business of putting in place a system for managing luxury effectively, we need to consider in depth the analysis of the relationship between three sociocultural concepts closely associated with it, namely money, fashion and art.

In the beginning there was luxury 27 Luxury and money The first of the three is the one that requires us to take the analysis the furthest.

And yet, an insufficient understanding of the relationship between luxury and money, without of course comparing the two, is one of the main causes of failure in the management of luxury.

To find the connection between these two concepts of luxury and money we have to resort to myths, like the one about Faust — it is the pact with the devil, not money, that brings wealth and eternal youth.

Sometimes, as in the myth of the Golden Age, it is lack of money that makes it possible to achieve this happiness. It is therefore manifestly clear that luxury is not only money, and money by itself is not luxury.

In this analysis we shall be basing ourselves on the concepts developed by Georg Simmel in his celebrated book Philosophie des Geldes Philosophy of Money , published in , the most 28 Back to luxury fundamentals profound and complete treatise ever written on the subject of money as seen from the conceptual point of view. Luxury and money as purely sociocultural phenomena Ever since people emerged from the subsistence society, we have had to trade in order to obtain the means of survival, and at that point money became indispensable.

In those places where shells cowries, for example served as currency, a banknote was worthless, and vice versa, just as when a local currency becomes worthless abroad if no one can be found who is prepared to change it. So, just like luxury, money is generated by life in society, but it plays a contrasting role in creating a social stratification; in fact, money has the power to break down social castes, as indeed other cultures.

The unidimensionality of money and the multidimensionality of luxury Money is a unique and universal measure because it is the collective and unidimensional abstraction of value; it is not the product of social stratification, for it is a continuum: you are a member of the aristocracy or you are not, but when it comes to money you can have more or less of it. Money as such does not bring on longing; what brings on longing is not money itself, but what you can get with it.

There is nothing luxurious about a banknote; it is only in our dreams that each one of us converts it into a luxury and in this way gives it a concrete meaning. The objectivity of money and the subjectivity, both personal and social, of luxury Let us come back to what we said at the outset: price, and therefore money, is not a determinant of luxury.

It is quite obvious that price on its own does not make something a luxury; an ordinary automobile will cost more than a luxury purse, and it is a common error to believe that to turn any product into a luxury product all it takes is to raise its price, which will soon bring about financial failure — a product that is more expensive can often turn into a product that is too expensive, one that nobody wants, rather than a luxury product that people long for.

For anyone looking for financial success which is the point of this book , things are even more clear-cut: within a given range, the most expensive products are never the most profitable, and a company that makes only very expensive products does not generally have any financial success as in the case of Rolls-Royce, for example , or is likely to find it outside of its core production designer jewellery and haute couture, for example.

Too narrow a client base would entail crippling costs; Volkswagen has publicly admitted that each Bugatti Veyron costs the company over N4 million to produce, whereas it is sold for only! N1 million. If we take up this analogy and take our current analysis to its logical end, we come to the conclusion that money inexorably becomes the language of any constituted society, or rather it becomes the vocabulary, for it designates everything in an explicit and unique manner — if the economy is fluid, a product or service has at any given moment a fixed price, just as it has a name or a barcode!

Seen from this angle, luxury plays the role of the grammar for the language of this society: just as the grammar does for vocabulary, it is luxury that brings monetary signs together to create a language.

And the more elaborate and structured this grammar is, the more elaborate the social structure. In the USA, it was in the beginning that the Founding Fathers, having a core of shared values centered on the Bible, were able to structure North American society on clear foundations; but this society has not had the time to establish firm roots or create a powerful history. In placing ourselves in the territory of Value, so dear to economists, we could say that luxury introduces a new notion of value that goes beyond the classic dialectic of use-value and exchange-value: symbolic value.

The use-value of a product being a non-monetary value, and the exchange-value representing its price, the luxury-value of a product is its symbolic value, also non-monetary, emanating not from work or exchange but from social stratification.

It will be greater or lesser, depending on everyone and on the social context, but it will have to be higher than the exchange-value the price of the product for a large enough number of individuals for there to be a market for the product.

However, luxury is something radically different from trading-up, which does not have the sociological and historical impact of luxury. Right up to the turn of the 19th century, fashion belonged to the luxury world; only the favoured social stratum could afford the luxury of not having to keep their clothes until they had worn out, and of buying others without being driven by necessity to do so. In the 20th century the fashion world started finding a degree of freedom, then to diverge from that of luxury, and today the overlap between luxury and fashion is in practice extremely slight — although this fact is not generally publicized.

Fashion claims to be a luxury an affordable one, if possible Many luxury brands adopt the behaviour of fashion brands. Sharing certain aspects of luxury, including the quality of not really being essential and a certain element of showing-off, fashion would like to think of itself as belonging to the world of luxury in order to improve its status.

We have considered the social function in the present day of luxury, but what is it in the case of fashion? In fact, if the importance of luxury in our modern democratic societies comes from its role of social stratification, the equally great importance of fashion derives from the negative consequences for human beings of urbanization — anonymity and an unnatural life; one of the most common collective responses as a way of regaining lost time, or even of creating an illusion of time, is through the frenzied use of fashion.

Being unable to adapt quickly enough to this new universe, people have had to find ways of adjusting, as once they had to adjusting to living in caves. Christmas eve. Christmas day. The Christmas dinner. Little Britain. Traits of Indian character. Philip of Pokanoker. John Bull. The pride of the village. The angler. The legend of Sleepy Hollow. L'envoy by Washington Irving. Diamonds, Band Bezaubernd by Emma Green. Diamonds - Volume 10 : Foudroyant by Emma Green.

How do brands navigate and expand their markets? And how do luxury companies organize their resources to design and develop products and services to continually sell to their customers? The authors also explore the patterns that have emerged in the ownership, management and the manufacturing in luxury goods companies, where dominance is usually found in certain countries.

This book focuses on six key industries in the luxury product sector: fashion, automotive, hospitality, furniture, cosmetics and jewellery. Through these examples and cases, the authors analyze how luxury companies are facing the challenges posed by external shocks and an extensive need for digitalization. Using concepts and theories from macroeconomics such as globalisation and corporate and business strategy, the book aims to connect the dots between theory and practice.

Resilience of Luxury Companies in Times of Change provides perspectives of the past, present and future — how luxury companies have evolved over time and managed to stay resilient despite the challenges they have faced through the different eras. Luxury is booming. The rise of emerging-market luxury brands and the digital revolution are reshaping the industry, but what's next and what trends will the future bring? The rise of emerging market luxury brands, digital and online innovations, and growth in consumption globally has opened the doors for seasoned luxury houses and new players to expand their horizons.

This book charts the trends that are shaping the luxury industry, particularly the rise of the luxury industry in Asia and emerging markets. Meta-Luxury sets out to define the ultimate meaning of true luxury, exploring it as both a culture and business model. Through the concept of Unique Achievement and the drivers of Craftsmanship, Focus, History and Rarity, the authors examine what is at the heart of true luxury through a unique series of conversations.

Presenting some of the most significant research on the modern understanding of luxury, this edited collection of articles from the Journal of Brand Management explores the complex relationships consumers tie with luxury, and the unique characteristics of luxury brand management.

Covering the segmentation of luxury consumers worldwide, the specificity of luxury management, the role of sustainability for luxury brands and major insights from a customer point of view, Advances in Luxury Brand Management is essential reading for upper level students as well as scholars and discerning practitioners.

Offering an insider's view of the inner workings of the luxury world, The Luxury Alchemist is the ultimate guide for anyone aspiring to create or grow their own luxury brand. With an in-depth analysis of the ever-evolving luxury market to the Magic Ingredients needed to launch a luxury brand, this title features intriguing stories and anecdotes from leading companies and revered names. Mendel, and Reem Acra, Maisonrouge meticulously leads readers through the strategies that these successful brands employed in order to make it to the top.

A second section takes readers through two up-and-coming startups, Savelli and Virgin Galactic. Using the field of material culture as its methodological departure point, this Palgrave Pivot explains the strategic advantages that brands can set in place when their executives are fully in command of how to move from strategy to tactics. Specifically, it studies the brands, their products and signature experiences as well as their relationship with the consumer in an attempt to define the greater powers that have pushed fashion labels in and out of fashion.

It focuses on case analysis of specific luxury fashion brands and attempts to link those to the greater context of material culture while also elaborating on theoretical discussions.

Bridging theory and practice, this book explores the relationship between creative strategy and cultural intelligence. The Luxury Strategy is the definitive work on the essence of a luxury brand strategy. It puts an end to the confusion around the term, and explains the fundamental differences between 'premium', 'fashion', and 'luxury' strategies. Based on an analysis of the social functions of luxury, of worldwide best practices and on first hand direct experience, it sets out the rules for success, and turns established marketing rules upside down.

The Luxury Strategy provides the first rigorous blueprint for the effective management of luxury brands and companies at the highest level, including human resources and financial management.