Luxura Strategy in Action [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Jonas Hoffmann and Ivan Coste-Maniere What exactly do we mean by 'luxury'? Most of us are able to recognize a luxury product, but we are unable to define the specific characteristics that contribute to the concept of luxury. This is because our perception of luxury is individual; it depends on our individual real-life experiences. We each value a different aspect of what we call luxury. It may be to do with rarity, class, quality or comfort. Luxury could be something tailor-made, something special to do, or to own, a privilege, or simply the time to do what we want with our money. The meaning of luxury and the sorts of customers that buy luxury have continually been evolving, but never as dramatically as in the past 20 years. The sheer number of luxury consumers has exploded as upper- and high-class societies are growing around the world. With more potential consumers, the luxury sector is today healthier than ever - increasing at around three times the rate of worldwide wealth. In the light of these changes, luxury brands have had to completely rethink their strategies and to rely increasingly on state-of-the-art marketing and management tools to help them keep up with consumers' shifting expectations, desires and dreams. There is no place for traditional marketing. Brands that were used to selling high volume to a small, elite group of customers have had to evolve to sell a lower volume to an ever-increasing number of 'ordinary' customers. Brands can no longer rely simply on their name or reputation to maintain market share. Instead, they have to actively compete with other brands on innovation, creativity, distribution, communications and intellectual property. They are forced