The effects of power on consumers’ evaluation of a luxury brand's corporate social responsibility

This paper examines how power affects consumers’ responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of luxury brands. The results of three studies show that high‐power individuals evaluated a luxury brand's CSR campaign more positively than low‐power individuals. High‐power individuals viewed CSR activities as being more fluent than low‐power individuals. This study further demonstrates that power influences consumers’ responses to nonluxury brand's CSR activities. Low‐power individuals, who are more receptive to warmth, evaluated nonluxury brand's CSR more favorably rather than high‐power individuals.     

Status of brands in children’s consumption: What letters to Santa posted on La Poste website tell us

The purpose of the research is to identify different consumption styles based on a large collection of letters to Santa written by some children and/or their families and submitted to the French Post website (La Poste). One of our main interests focuses on the presence and weight of brands and licenses in children’s wish lists. We have had access to all the anonymous posts sent to Santa Claus through La Poste’s website during the 2013 and 2014 Christmas holidays. We analyzed the nature of the wish lists as shown in the 43,000‐post database using several textual data analysis techniques. Extensive heterogeneity was found among children’s and families’ postures regarding that specific ritual. The different types of emails reflect the meaning families associate with Christmas time but also their different consumption styles or attitudes toward consumption: reasoned, educational, hedonistic, or materialistic, for example. When focusing on brands and licenses, we can also observe significant differences in the way families and children include them in their consumption decisions. Brands could have a very different weight in Christmas wish lists and their natures reflect different value transmission modes. The French market for Christmas children brands is rather stable and focuses on a few top leading global brands such as Playmobil, Barbie, or Lego. At least one of the ten leading brands is mentioned in half of evaluated Christmas wish lists. The analysis confirms that brands are very clearly gendered and associated with the children’s ages. Peak time for brand desire is alleged to be reached between the age of 7 and 9. To our knowledge, our research is the first to analyze a large sample of spontaneous data to capture children’s consumption styles and attitudes toward brands. Because of our classification, a first typology of parental consumption styles has also been identified.     

How power distance belief,self-construal,and relationship norms impact conspicuous consumption

Building on the idea that luxury products can signal the owner's status to others, this research elucidates how fundamental and pervasive social factors—power distance belief (PDB), self-construal, and relationship norms—dynamically impact consumers' preferences for conspicuous consumption. Through three experiments, we found that (1) high-PDB consumers are more likely to prefer conspicuous consumption compared to low-PDB consumers, and this effect is mediated by their need for status; (2) the relationship between PDB and conspicuous consumption is enhanced under interdependent self-construal, attenuated under independent self-construal, and mediated by consumers' need for status; (3) these effects are moderated by relationship norms, such that the positive effect of PDB on conspicuous consumption under interdependent self-construal is attenuated when communal relationships (vs. exchange relationships) are salient. Our conceptualization and findings contribute to the literature on the dynamics of individuals' status-related behavior in social psychology and related fields, and provide important practical applications for luxury businesses.     

An experimental study to investigate the impact of image interactivity on the perception of luxury in an online shopping context

The current study investigates whether image interactivity can positively influence luxury perceptions in a virtual shopping environment, by offering shoppers a feeling of telepresence. 185 respondents were referred to either an image interactive or non-interactive virtual luxury store and completed an online questionnaire afterwards to measure their luxury perception. The results of this study show that image interactivity leads to higher perceptions of exclusivity, quality, hedonism and extended self due to a higher perceived telepresence. This study offers some guidelines for luxury brands to retain their luxury perception high in a virtual shopping environment.     

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN SHOPPING FOR LUXURY GOODS: WESTERN,ASIAN, AND HISPANIC TOURISTS

This study examines the significant differences in shopping for luxury goods among Western, Asian, and Hispanic tourists and, in particular, the perceived importance of different types and characteristics of the luxury consumer and travel goods tourists buy on vacation. The results show that Western, Asian, and Hispanic tourists‐shoppers significantly differ in the perceived importance of luxury consumer and travel goods and their characteristics. Western and Asian tourists attach more importance to buying “gifts for others” than Hispanic tourists. Asian tourists attach more importance to buying “golf equipment,” “health spa/wellness treatment,” “luxury cruises,”and “luxury yachts/rentals” than Hispanic tourists. Western tourists attach more importance to “fine dining” than Hispanic tourists. Implications of the study results and recommendations for future studies are discussed.     

Examining strategies for maximizing and utilizing brand prestige in the luxury cruise industry

The purpose of this research was to examine the antecedents and consequences of brand prestige in the luxury cruise industry in order to provide luxury cruise managers with practical strategies for maximizing and utilizing brand prestige. Based on the existing theoretical background, it was hypothesized that eight types of cruise experience factors influence the formation of brand prestige: food quality, service quality, staff/crew attractiveness, entertainment, ship facilities, ports of call, programs/places for children, and cabin quality. In addition, it was proposed that brand prestige can result in three managerial outcomes: well-being perception, customer brand identification, and brand loyalty. A conceptual model was developed and tested using the empirical data collected from 330 U.S. luxury cruise passengers. The results showed that all of the proposed hypotheses were statistically supported. The key theoretical/managerial implications that were derived from the analysis are presented and discussed in the last part of the article.     

Vacationers and the economic “double dip” in Europe

The subject of this study concerns individual vacationers' reactions to the global economic crisis. This crisis is lasting longer than expected, resulting in Europe in a “double dip”. Vacationers can use different strategies to cope with this crisis: from pruning (giving up the vacation) via cheese-slicing (economizing on vacation attributes) to non-economizing. Based on a theoretical framework, it was predicted that over time the pruning segment would become larger than the cheese-slicing segment. A longitudinal study in The Netherlands, covering 4 years, shows economic developments having a relatively minor effect on vacationers' holiday plans and intentions, with no increase in the size of the pruning segment. Six vacationer segments were found, three of which can be considered to be crisis-resistant. Each segment pursues different economizing strategies, with each requiring a customized marketing strategy. Five explanations are proposed for the relatively limited influence of the economic “double dip” on Dutch vacationers. Future research can be directed to comparing vacations with other consumer products, in order to explain the crisis-resistance of vacation planning during this economic crisis.     

When luxury advertising adds the identitary values of luxury: A semiotic analysis

The majority of researches on luxury focus on the behaviour and opinions of consumers and let drop the important role that advertising produces on them, as is done in this work and shown with a relational model. In addition to their commercial message, some remarkable and artistic advertisings convey the identitary values of luxury (IVL) characterizing luxury parent Houses. We list and analyze these IVL: craft production, raw materials, respect of craftsmen, their knowledge, know-how, gestures and traits of artistic genius. A semiotic and rhetoric analysis of two selected advertisings (Louis Vuitton, Hermès) allow to identify the semic richness of discursive content of symbolic images and identitary narratives of each luxury brand (“griffe”), revealing the implicit IVL. We conclude that strength and power of major luxury Houses lie in the global coherence they apply everywhere (creation, products, narratives and advertisings), reinforcing their brand image and attracting more loyal consumers.     

Country of origin: A competitive advantage?

Country of origin has been identified in the literature as an important cue that might be used by global marketers to influence consumers' valuation of the brand. Its effect on consumer perceptions, affect and behavioral intentions has been widely documented, based on consumer surveys and laboratory experiments. Despite this empirical evidence, we argue that country of origin is only one extrinsic cue among many extrinsic and intrinsic cues available to the consumer in a real purchase situation. Furthermore, in real life, consumers are likely to engage in some level of information search, which would further dilute the country of origin effect in the marketplace. Based on these arguments, we conclude that country of origin might not necessarily lead to a competitive (dis)advantage in terms of a price premium or discount. For a sample of products, we show that the objective product quality varies significantly by country of origin, and that these differences are consistent with extant research on country of origin effects on consumers' perceptions. After controlling for quality differences across brands, we demonstrate that marketers from different countries charge prices that are justified by differences in product quality. Price premiums or discounts are therefore explained by differences in product quality rather than the image effect produced by the country of origin cue.     

Brand value: how affective labour helps create brands

One way brands create value is by engaging the capacity of cultural labourers to animate affective connections with consumers. Brands assemble social spaces that harness the communicative capacities of cultural actors. A mode of branding that works by managing an open-ended social process depends on affective labour. Affective labour involves not only the capacity of individuals to produce specific meanings and feelings, but also the open-endedly social capacity to stimulate and channel attention and recognition. This affective labour does not always depend on making particular “authentic” representations, but on facilitating a general circulation of meaning. By investing in social spaces and relations corporate brands engage popular musicians in new forms of labour. This article examines the participation of popular musicians in branding programmes run in Australia by corporate brands between 2005 and 2010. I examine the accounts of musicians and managers who participate in these programmes to consider how they make their participation in social relations that create brand value meaningful. They employ a variety of practices: identifying with brands, endorsing brands' claims of socially responsible investment in culture, and distancing themselves from their own participation in branded space.