The author of Why People Buy Things They Don't Need has written a practical guide for luxury marketers based on a two-year survey of luxury consumers. As Danziger sees it, the first decade of the twenty-first century is the age of luxury, and a new generation of consumers is searching for happiness.
Luxury, she writes, is "that which nobody needs but desires." Luxury is "about the consumers' fantasies, hopes, and dreams and not really about the physical or material realm." People shop in the luxury market to gain new experiences rather than to get more stuff; luxury shopping is an experience "everyone everywhere" at every income level values, enjoys, and may be willing to pay for.
In the author's view, marketers who want to win in this area must:
- Learn what luxury means to consumers.
- Build more luxury value into products and brands at every price point.
- Be aware of how the experience they are selling will meet or fail to meet a customer's shopping goal. (For instance, fashion, she writes, needs to deliver a "beauty experience.")
She first provides a 5P luxury marketing paradigm: Product, Pricing, Promotion, Placement, and a fifth P, People. She then probes in detail the different types of luxury consumers, their dominant characteristics, purchase behavior, and inner lives, including their motivations and drives. She then shifts attention to three types of products: home luxuries, personal luxuries, and so-called experiential luxuries.
Finally, Danziger addresses practical questions of pricing and branding. In the last chapter she sums up with eleven key lessons for marketing to luxury consumers, including, for example, "Give your luxury consumers an exit ramp off the mass track" and "Nurture brand evangelists to spread the word about the luxury values your brand delivers." Abundant examples, cases, and tips are provided throughout. An additional section of the book called "Personal Perspective on Luxury" provides insights into the luxury field from twenty-eight marketers from such companies as KitchenAid, Starwood, and QVC.—Poping Lin