In today’s landscape, we are faced with a strong trend regarding new market strategies aimed at strengthening the identity of a particular brand, so at the time of deployment it will be necessary to keep in mind a number of factors that will result in its success or not.
However, a potential customer’s behavior has changed over time, shaping itself according to the surrounding demands; despite today’s poor economic situation, the element that seems not to be affected at all by the crisis is the concept of luxury.Luxury represents a good that the community seems not to want to give up, a ubiquitous social dynamic that has marked man illo tempore. A modern consumer shows himself to be eclectic, fickle, inconstant, no longer following a linear consumption pattern conditioned by variables such as income or social class: his consumption patterns are constantly evolving. Moreover, in some circumstances, he turns out to be demanding and selective, not seeking something only to enhance his wealth and social position, but to highlight his ability to value some specific characteristics of the good. The most common reasoning is to distinguish oneself through a unique and rare brand that adequately designs its style symbol. Because of this desire to openly manifest one’s personality, terms such as masstige, premium, luxury are compulsively spread, which often instead of clarifying the concept confuse it. This chaos hides an underlying truth, which is that luxury should not be identified with a simple word but as a modus vivendi and a mindset built on a different confrontation with customers, managing the brand and relating to the world. But what are the actual characteristics that make us talk about a luxury product or brand?
The thin line between Luxury and Premium in Branding
In today’s society, true luxury is not massified but circumscribed to a “chosen few” because this best renders the exceptional nature of the brand in question, yet the concept of “accessible luxury,” also known as Premium Brand, is becoming increasingly popular. In this context, the yardstick that makes people talk about Premium and Luxury Brand has changed. This is a long diatribe that triggers numerous discussions between those who make luxury and those who commodify it, lowering it to a mere bargaining chip. Speaking of Premium Brand, one falls into the misunderstanding of associating it with luxury because of its perfection but, to put it bluntly, there is a substantial difference: premium caters to the masses and tries to engage its customers as much as possible, pandering to them; on the other hand, Luxury is a rarity, a sought-after commodity that is inaccessible to some. Trading up strategies that prefer the design of the luxury brand rather than its excellence become widespread, segmenting the offering, and thus also the clientele, into “democratic” luxury and luxury in the true sense of the word. This increasingly maximizes the demand for traceable but less rare products; to this new sales philosophy even some famous brands have, alas, bowed their heads in order to cope with the problems of trade. What are the real differences between the two brands? Let us try to briefly list the distinctions.
Premium Brand:
- Is interested in the customer’s need and tries to meet his or her every request;
- there is often offshoring, which allows the company to save extremely on labor resulting in lower prices;
- undergoes massification, making its products accessible;
- carries out a downward strategy, becoming comparative and competitive.
Luxury Brand:
- foregrounds the personality of the product rather than its functionality;
- does not fit the customer’s needs but the customer must submit to the rules of its elite market;
- the brand is highlighted through limited production;
- products require a waiting list that makes the customer feel privileged – easy accessibility would penalize the concept of exclusivity;
- luxury brand does not need advertising but sells itself;
- cares about maintaining a high profile of its reputation, highlighting its specificity;
- tends to be superlative.
What is the connection between luxury and the web?
Having made an excursus, albeit a brief one, on economic change and the inevitable binomial that comes with it, it is incumbent to consider the important role that the Web is taking on in this momentous shift. Virtual reality only facilitates this path of debasing big names in favor of accessibility at the expense of excellence. There are some big brands that have felt the need to rely on online distributions in order to intensify sales, just think of the multitude of e-commerce sites, that is, online storefronts that make their products available to the user, then possible customer. It often happens to see big names, always considered “luxury,” submit to the great law of the market and abandon their specificity, preferring the customer and his demands.
But are online sales systems that harmful?
For companies in general absolutely not, because they allow immediate sales, especially if supported by a good marketing plan. The penalization, if we can call it that, happens only for those true luxury brands forced to find a good compromise.
Let’s think of Cartier, which has always been an extra-luxury good, and felt the need to create an e-commerce section to feel in step with the times but following a reasoning aimed at selling its image rather than its merchandise. It turns out, in fact, that it is unlikely that a hypothetical customer would spend such high amounts of money through a web service; this is a strategy designed to create a new facade but remaining hooked to a substrate of luxury. Or Gucci “lending” its garments to online storefronts, such as Zalando or Amazon, albeit maintaining its exclusivity on its portal so that the same product can be offered in both solutions, on the one hand with low prices and on the other with real prices. Why does this happen? Because the company does not care about selling online but is only interested in creating an aura of renewal and originality around itself; its real goal is not to sell or advertise but is reduced to creating an apparent modernity. But this is not the case everywhere. Even today, luxury production houses remain in vogue that shine their own light and maintain rigid labels in order to elevate their names. We are unlikely to find brands like Rolex or Ferrari for sale at affordable prices, because the purchase is born to be difficult and, why not, “sweaty.” In today’s society, the Internet occupies 70 percent of daily activities, so entrusting one’s commercial destiny to it is not always wrong, but one must be aware that if used in the wrong way, this could detract from the good name and tradition, losing the main factor that categorizes it as luxury: inaccessibility!
