OUGD603 / Extended Practice - PART 2 Design Publication: Luxury Products and Consumer Psychology.

OUGD603. 
DESIGN PUBLICATION. 
LUXURY PRODUCTS AND CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY. 

The Consumer Psychology of Marketing Luxury Goods.

What motivates consumers to buy luxury goods?

According to the findings of the study published in Psychology & Marketing, it depends on where the consumer lives.

In America, self-fulfillment is the main motivation to buy luxury products. It is not to please other people. The quality of a luxury item is also not a driving force behind an American’s purchase of a luxury item. In France, buyers of luxury goods place importance on the exclusivity and high price. The ideas that the product is not mass-produced and only a select few can afford them are factors that drive the French consumer to buy. Germans, Hungarians, Italians, and Slovakians purchase luxury goods because of their quality and not the prestige that comes with owning them.


My Thoughts:
The reason behind purchasing luxury products differs from country to country, where some consider luxury purchases something of improving status, others concern themselves with the quality of the product itself. Some of the motivations behind luxury product purchases are:

- Self fulfilment 
- Exclusivity 
- High price
- Not mass produced. 
- Only a few people can afford. 
- Quality over prestige. 

What are the types of people who buy luxury goods?

A study published in the Journal of Marketing has superbly delineated the two types of people who comprise the market for luxury goods. There are those termed in the study as the patricians, who are the truly wealthy ones. Patricians do not need status and do not want to be identified with a brand. So, they pay a lot of money to avoid appearing “branded” and tend to buy luxury goods that come with quiet, minimalist logos. The high-end products chosen by patricians are only recognizable to their fellow patricians. 

Then there are the ones called parvenus. They are also wealthy, but they are in need of status to indicate that they are part of the affluent group. Thus, they buy bold, logo-filled goods.


My Thoughts:
There are two different types of people who purchase luxury goods. 

Patricians: The ones who can truly afford and lavish in such luxury goods - They do not need additional status acquired by purchasing such products. To avoid being branded, they pay extra prices to buy products with not as obvious branding. For example, Louis Vuitton is known as a luxury brand, and its easy to point out a lot of LV merchandise as they print the LV monogram pattern across a lot of the items sold. Louis Vuitton is also known to be one of the more affordable luxury brands. For example, the bag shown below is £710, whereas the Hermes bag shown below this is priced at just over £3000 and the only evidence that it is Hermes, is the H padlock it has as a zipper. Otherwise the bag just looks like a quality leather bag. This could suggest that the more stripped bag design is, the more exclusive it seems, and therefore the more luxurious it becomes. 

£710.00

Hermes bag - £3020.00

Parvenus: Are the other group of people know to buy luxury goods, whom choose to buy those such as Louis Vuitton for their lower price bracket, and more identifiable designer aesthetic. These such products are known amongst everyone as designer, whereas those such as Hermes may only be identifiable by other patricians. 

Why a cognitive approach is key to luxury marketing.

Disfluency:

According to Adam Alter, a psychologist and professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, people associate more complexity with luxury products and so disfluency, or cognitive difficulty, makes luxury products more appealing.

One thought is that things that are distant drive aspirations. Disfluency creates a kind of cognitive distance.

The implication for luxury brands is that they would best require some effort from the consumer to understand and appreciate them.

Laphroaig Malt Whisky, Louis Vuitton and Häagen Dazs, for example, all have names that require us to think about how we pronounce them – at least for the first time.

Ornate labels that make type more difficult to read, such as Chivas Regal, or typefaces that are less legible, such as Neiman Marcus, similarly create the need for effort on the part of consumers. All of these things take a bit more effort, creating cognitive disfluency.

My Thoughts:

I'm quite confused by this point made as it seems to work against the idea of restraint and using minimal design in association with luxurious products. It is almost asking designers to consider pretentiousness in their designs, which I think can often lessen the luxuriousness of a brand.

Scarcity:

Cues of scarcity can come from descriptions of precious materials; from manufacturing processes that clearly cannot keep up with demand, i.e., “handmade by a dying breed of artisans in ateliers in the Pyrenees;” or even blatant marketing approaches such as limited editions or time-limited offers.

Scarcity, or sense of rarity of some sort, should be implicit in every luxury brand’s narrative. It is a principle that has particular opportunities to be played out in time- and context-sensitive digital environments.

My Thoughts:
Scarcity is a reply to the idea of exclusivity, therefore It is imperative that a luxury product is marketed as rare or exclusive in order to attract those consumers looking for such individuality.




Anticipation:

With luxury, it is not just about having. It is about desiring. The wait is part of the experience.

Luxury brands tend to focus on the experience they deliver, but building anticipation of the experience should be considered equally important. Anticipation is not just about creating a pent-up sense of demand. It reflects on the quality and care of the brand or manufacturer and, of course, implies scarcity.

Waiting lists are used regularly to control sales and create anticipation towards luxury products. 

My Thoughts:

Waiting lists seem a popular choice in creating suspense with luxurious brands however how can anticipation between product and packaging be created? This could be done via layers as previously discussed in my research? or by considering haptic elements in increasing the number of hand positions needed to undo all packaging. 




Prominence:

A number of evolutionary psychologists, including Mr. Miller, suggest that luxury goods are markers of sexual selection. The beautiful and rare objects that we prize are really signs to others that they should prize us.

Thus, luxury brands will often be subtle and visible only to those in the know, as a large part of their raison d’être is to infer status on their aficionados and advocates.

Rolex has a level of broad prominence via its celebrity ads and significant presence at golf and tennis tournaments such as the U.S. Open and Wimbledon that it reaches wider than its potential user base.

Aston Martin’s long-term relationship with the James Bond franchise is all about making the brand recognized by people who will never own one, clearly establishing that those who do buy one know they will be sending a strong impression to other people.

My Thoughts:

Luxury brands should aim to reach further than their demographic audience to share the luxuriousness of the brand so that those who can afford it, will be envied by those who cannot.