Prestige Brands or Luxury Brands?
An Exploratory Inquiry on Consumer Perceptions
党性修养锤炼不够Bernard Dubois
HEC School of Management
Sandor Czellar1
开早会
University of Geneva
Brand Management Track
1 Corresponding author : Sandor Czellar, University of Geneva, 40, boulevard du Pont-d'Arve, 1211 Geneva Switzerland, phone 00 41 2
机壳2 705 81 14, fax 00 41 22 705 81 04, email czellars@hec.fr. Thanks are expresd to the Swiss National Rearch Foundation for financial support and to Gilles Laurent from the HEC School of Management for valuable advice. The paper is published in the European Marketing Academy 31th Conference Proceedings, Braga, Portugal, forthcoming.
Prestige Brands or Luxury Brands?
An Exploratory Inquiry on Consumer Perceptions
An interpretative analysis of in-depth consumer interviews explores the relationship between the concepts of "luxury" and "prestige" as applied to brands. Prestige is bad on unique human accomplishment inherent to the brand whereas luxury refers to benefits stemming from refinement, aesthetics and a sumptuous lifestyle. Results indicate that prestige can be achieved independently of luxury in many categories. At a symbolic level, consumers can interpret luxury as the symbol of brand prestige. A discussion of managerial insights and future rearch directions ends the paper.
Keywords: brands, consumer perceptions, symbolic interactionism, qualitative methods
Introduction
A few years ago, during a press conference, Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of the French LVMH Group, said that luxury was a word he did not like and insisted on using the word "prestige" to describe the brands sold by his company. Mr Arnault ems to have changed his mind, since the latest version of his web site introduces the LVMH group as the world-wide leader of the luxury indus
男生qq昵称大全try, with an estimated market share of about 15% (Arnault 2000, ). Indeed, marketers often u the concepts of luxury and prestige interchangeably, a practice that is not void of jeopardy. Becau of a lack of evidence on how consumers perceive the two concepts, brand advertising themes built around them may remain incoherent. If the words "luxury" and "prestige" are to be ud in advertiments and promotional material, it is esntial to understand how the intended audience decodes and manipulates them.
志愿者宣言Confusion ems to reign in the economic and marketing literature, too. Although adjectives such as "status" (Grossman and Shapiro 1988, Mason 1996), "Hedonic" (Dhar and Wertenbroch 2000), "top of the range" (Laurent and Dubois 1993), or "signature" (Jolson, Anderson and Leber 1981) have sometimes been ud in the literature, "luxury" and "prestige" are by far the most widely ud words to refer to brands that posss substantial intangible value. Most of the time though, "luxury" and "prestige" are ud as synonyms
(Bagwell and Bernheim 1996). In this rearch however, it is shown that "prestige" and "luxury" cover different conceptual domains in the customers' eyes, bearing substantial conquences in terms of rearch and practice.
Specifically, we prent the results from a qualitative study bad on in-depth interviews with consumers. Data are analyd with content analysis methods with the purpo of identifying the themes and experiences most often associated with the concepts under scrutiny. Managerial implications and future rearch directions are treated at the end of the paper.
Methodology
A discovery-oriented approach was ud to explore consumer attitudes towards prestige and luxury. We opted for the qualitative technique of in-depth interviewing, which is often ud to define emerging concepts and models of consumer behaviour (e. g. Fournier 1998, Otnes, Lowrey and Shrum 1997). The interview guide was looly structured aiming at the elicitation of either direct or indirect consumer experiences with luxury or prestige, in the form of a "conversation with a purpo" (Burgess 1984). Informants were purposively lected with important variations on socio-demographic characteristics to gain a broad range of perspectives on the concepts under scrutiny (McCracken 1988, Mason 1997). A total of fifteen people aged from 24 to 82 were interviewed either at their home or workplace. Interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed into written text, resulting in 200 pages of verbatim. Following the method of interpretative analysis, the text was investigated in two ways: (1) ca by ca by identifying the major themes; (2) across cas, by analysing the crit
ical experiences of our informants (Fournier 1998).
Results
Our analysis of the verbatim is bad on a theory-laden interpretation (Denzin 2001). The underlying paradigm is symbolic interactionism in social psychology (Manis and Meltzer 1978, Charon 1995). Such a view holds that individual reprentations of the world are the product of the internalisation of objective and symbolic realities through social interaction (Solomon 1983, Dittmar 1992). Subjective reprentations of people, objects and events have therefore two sources: (1) perceptions of objective reality, that is, the reprentation of the world outside individuals; (2) interpretation of symbolic reality, that is, the t of socially
shared symbols bearing specific meanings for all members of a group (Dittmar 1992). Space constraints prevent us from prenting the detailed results of the content analysis, so only the key findings are highlighted below, illustrated with excerpts from the interviews.
Subjective perceptions of objective reality: Prestige and luxury
Prestige. For our informants, prestige is a subjective evaluative judgement about the high social stat
us of people or inanimate objects such as brands. Rearch on affect shows that evaluative judgements (appraisals) are often followed by emotional reactions (Bagozzi, Gopinath and Nyer 1999). Such is the ca in our interviews since informants refer to feelings of liking, awe and admiration toward prestigious people or objects. The basic antecedent of prestige judgements is the perception of a positive and outstanding accomplishment that can be deferred to. This unique accomplishment stems directly from the perception of objective reality and not from the interpretation of symbols. To illustrate, in the following excerpt, one informant explains spontaneously that:
"Prestige – it's to do with admiration … It depends, it can be, if it's the prestige of an object – it's admiration toward the object, if it's the prestige of a person, it's admiration toward the person for what they've done, their success, for what they are."
Brands that merit such a deference might come from many product or rvice categories. Examples cited by our informants include sportswear (e.g. Nike), cars (e. g. Aston Martin, Ferrari), wristwatches (e. g. Patek Philippe, Blancpain) and universities (e. g. Harvard, Sorbonne). In product categories, the key criterion for a brand to be judged prestigious is an inherent, unique know-how, which may concern either a specific attribute or the overall quality and performance of the produce. In the ca of a wristwatch brand for instance, this outstanding accomplishment may be the size of t
he object, as illustrated by this excerpt from an interview:
"It's the miniaturisation, man is able to make such things as immen dams and at the same time tiny ones. There are watches small as a green pea. But it holds well and it works. What really amazes me is the human limit, what people are capable of …"
网络规划师>丰碑读后感In rvice categories, people accord prestige to brands in a similar way. For instance, in the ca of an educational institution, the perceived exceptional accomplishment is most often
the quality of teaching and rearch of faculty members, as illustrated by this excerpt from an interview:
"[It's] the sheer number of leading or highly qualified people in their field who teach there … the great authors work in the prestigious universities."
Luxury. Whereas the prestige perceptions stem from a unique accomplishment inherent to the brand, luxury is of a different nature in our informants' eyes. It concerns lf-indulgence, be it private or public. Luxury is linked to subjective perceptions of comfort, beauty and a sumptuous lifestyle in objective reality. One of our informants, who has recently purchad a hou in the residential area of a large city, explains explicitly that luxury means comfort for him:
"I have the garden, the hou, all this is beautiful. A hou in Florida too … For me, I assimilate it [luxury] to comfort."
In another informants' words, "luxury means everything that is more than what one needs". Brands that fulfil the requirements are naturally characterid by a high price tag. The findings are in line with Berry's theory of luxury, which defines the concept in opposition to necessity (Berry 1994). The results also corroborate previous rearch results obtained by the authors with a different t of interviews (Dubois, Laurent and Czellar 2001).
The product and rvice categories associated with luxury are more restricted than tho evoked for prestige. The categories are all related to comfort, beauty and refinement. The most frequently cited by the informants are the catering industry (five-star hotels, gourmet restaurants), cosmetics and garments (e. g. Chanel, YSL) and jewellery (e. g. Cartier, Bulgari). Indeed, the categories have traditionally been considered belonging to the luxury ctors (Berry 1994).
Thus, according to our informants, luxury and prestige are distinct aspects of brands. A brand is judged prestigious only of unique accomplishment is perceived in it. Luxury does not necessarily require such a criterion since it refers to the Hedonic benefits of the brands related to a lf-indulging refined lifestyle, which need not be exceptional. Also, prestige is always a
中国移动流量查询positive evaluative judgement whereas luxury can be negative if it is too ostentatious. One of our informants argues that "prestige must be merited, luxury – not necessarily".
Interpretation of symbolic reality: Luxury as a prestige symbol
However, the perception of a real, unique achievement is not the only antecedent of brand prestige. As pointed out by Shenkar and Yuchtman-Yaar (1997), an important source of prestige judgements is prestige by association. In a symbolic interactionist perspective, this means that consumers may interpret symbols associated with a brand, which reprent a socially shared meaning. In the critical incidents of our interviews, a ries of prestige symbols were alluded to by the informants such as a name, a high price, events and characters associated with a brand. Luxury also emerged as a type of prestige symbolism. Informants perceived the high luxury level of certain brands as prestige symbols. Such is the ca of an Aston Martin sports car, which an informant considered prestigious becau of the unique driving performance offered by the car. This prestige appraisal is further reinforced by perceptions of high luxury stemming from comfort and beauty.
Note also that prestige is long and difficult to acquire. However, it is easy to lo if symbols such as luxury are not sustained by perceptions of objective reality linked to real achievement. If unique kno
w-how is lacking, one negative experience is enough to disqualify the brand from the domain of prestige. A story from an interview can illustrate this point. An informant had had a big esteem for a downtown restaurant becau people around him were talking about it but once he had been there, he realid that it was not up to the high expectations. The venue remained still a luxurious one but had completely lost its prestige:
"For me this is a luxury restaurant that's not at all prestigious. For the good reason that when I went there I found it really bad. I found that it was very expensive, rvice was disastrous, and then the menu, well it was medium, in any ca it wasn't worth the price… Everything is made to be comfortable, yes, it's more in the appearances … … The prestige, it's really in the art of cooking, and there you'll find none of it."
In this example, the venue itlf is perceived as luxurious becau of the ttings but it cannot be qualified prestigious becau the cuisine itlf cannot provide a proof of an outstanding accomplishment.
