Luxury brand marketing - The experience is everything!

INTRODUCTION

Experiential marketing has become a cornerstone of many recent advances in areas such as retailing, tourism and events marketing; however, marketing in the luxury goods sector does not appear to have explicitly engaged the theoretical issues involved. This raises the question, what does experiential marketing have to offer marketers within the luxury goods sector? In this paper, we will seek to introduce the experiential marketing debate, and will demonstrate how the questions raised by the concept are crucial to the development and implementation of effective marketing strategies within the luxury goods sector.

The marketing of luxury goods has become increasingly complex, being associated not only with conveying an image of quality, performance and authenticity, but also with attempting to sell an experience by relating it to the lifestyle constructs of consumers. The characteristics of luxury goods suggest that marketing within the sector is different from many other industries. Despite the amount of literature being written on these perceived differences, there is, however, evidence to suggest that marketing in the luxury goods sector relies heavily on traditional marketing concepts, and it is often difficult to discriminate approaches to luxury goods marketing from those advocated for other consumer products.

A NEW LUXURY PARADIGM

Parameters of luxury

Vickers and Renand¹ suggest that luxury and non-luxury goods can be conceptualised according to functional, experiential and interactional symbolic dimensions. Luxury has traditionally been associated with exclusivity, status and quality. Phau and Prendergast² state that luxury brands 'evoke exclusivity, have a well-known brand identity, enjoy high brand awareness and perceived quality, and retain sales levels and customer loyalty'. Changes in contemporary consumer behaviour in western societies have led to the emergence of a new meaning and perception of luxury. 'New luxury' has been defined as 'products and services that possess higher levels of quality, taste, and aspiration than other goods in the category but are not so expensive as to be out of reach'.³ A striking example of this phenomenon, covered widely in the popular media, was the launch of Karl Lagerfeld- and Stella McCartney-designed products at the fashion retail chain Hennes & Mauritz. Within a broader context, observers have pointed to the trend of middle-market consumers trading up for products that meet their aspiration needs,...