What Is Luxury And What Makes A Luxury Brand

What Is Luxury And What Makes A Luxury Brand?

Speaking of luxury, maybe the first word that occurred to us is “expensive”.

Indeed, the original definition of luxury goods on internet is “a kind of consumer goods

that is beyond people’s survival and development needs, it is unique, scarce and rare,

which is also called unnecessary means of livelihood. Since it has all this

characteristics, it is definitely expensive. In this thesis, I will mainly give conclusions

on luxury, which may include: the role of luxury brands, luxury brands vs. non-luxury

brands, characteristics of luxury and why they are important.

1. What Is Luxury?

As for the definition given above, it is merely a simple definition of luxury goods.

In this section, I will talk about deep implication of luxury, which will help us know more

about “what is luxury”.

Luxury comes from “lux”, a Latin word, which is the meaning of “strong fertility”.

And then evolved into waste and excess. Most European language had absorbed this

concept and finally this word was used to describe the fees and expenses that beyond

the necessary level in the process of production and usage of all kinds of goods.

As an “imported product”, there are different definitions of luxury. In Oxford

Advanced Dictionary, luxury is a thing that is expensive and enjoyable but not

essential. In Cambridge Advanced Dictionary, luxury is something expensive which is

pleasant but is not necessary. In Webster’s Dictionary, luxury is something adding to

pleasure or comfort but not absolutely necessary.

Concluding from the origin of the word and these three dictionaries, there are

roughly three key point of luxury: good, expensive, and not necessary.

2. Characteristics of Luxury

After data collection, I come to the conclusion that there are four characteristics

of luxury. And I will also talk about why luxury goods are important. In this section,the

luxury here refers to luxury goods.

The first characteristic is that it is not necessary. From the definition of luxury, we

can conclude a common point, which is luxury goods are not necessary. On the one

hand, the functional aspects can be replaced by other economic products. For

example, the original function of bags is to carry things when our hands are not

convenient. So if considered from the function aspect, we can totally use normal bags

to replace luxury bags. Exactly that is owing to other aspects, people may choose to

use luxury bags. On the other hand, sometimes we don’t need the luxury goods at all.

For instance, women love to wear jewelries to make themselves radiant. In fact, as for

survival condition, we don’t need jewelries at all.

The second characteristic is excellent quality. Obviously, luxury goods are of the

highest price among the commodities of the same classification. With such a high

price, the quality of luxury is also the most excellent. Such as the seats fabric of Benz

are mostly imported from New Zealand, of which the thickness must be controlled

between 23 to 25 microns, with the silk imported from China and cashmere imported

from India while spinning. At the same time, the supplier should protect the cows from

trauma and parasite. With such a high standard, of course the qualities of luxury

goods are excellent.

The third characteristic is strong personality. Designers had poured their effort

and inspiration into products. Like LV bags, when referring to LV, we can think of

flower with four petals and combination of LV letters. This image has become the

representative of LV. So the unique personality has become the emotional bond

between designers and consumers.

The last one is full of cultural traits. Luxury is a product of certain era and a

reflection of culture, which needs the accumulation of time, the influence of literacy

and the foil of history. The cultural features will be shown through the product, such as

the appearance, color, package and logo. As a result, the consumption of luxury

goods is not just a consumption of the practical value of the good itself, but also a

consumption of spiritual and cultural products.

Even so, the luxury consumption in China is entering a golden age. 25% of the

world’s luxury goods were bought by Chinese, there is a heat of luxury goods

consumption caused by the newly rich. We can see that the luxury goods are playing

a more and more important part in Chinese daily life. As for the reason why luxury

goods are important, I think there are two aspects.

The first aspect is that there is a huge market in both home and abroad, among

these consumers, there include fashion icons, the newly rich, and those who long for

luxury goods. Whether they want to follow the step of fashion, or they want to package

themselves, or they want to show off. Whatever the reasons are, the existence of

luxury goods meet the needs of them.

The second aspect is about society. The existence of luxury will stimulate

consumption and production, at the same time, it will satisfy the needs of some people

in certain occasions. What’s more, the consumption of luxury will create new services

and new economic growth item just like advertisement business, clothing and tourism

and so on.

Role of Luxury Brands

Sometimes, we are apt to confuse two issues: luxury goods and luxury brands.

Or even we will equal luxury goods to luxury brands. In fact, they are two different

concepts. If we define from the perspective of the function but ignoring the spiritual

aspect, some goods produced by luxury brands cannot be classified to luxury goods

naturally. But when these goods were carefully designed and produced, it has

contained some spiritual aspects such as cultural and fashion, and finally become a

luxury good.

So different from luxury goods, the concept of luxury brand is also worthy our

attention. Firstly, luxury brands come from the luxury goods it serves and represents.

These luxury goods may be luxury from the perspective of traditional definition, that is,

unnecessary goods, like Cartier’s jewelries; or they are non-traditional luxury goods,

like Armani’s clothes. But when they are covered with the influence of luxury brands,

they all become luxury in our daily life.

Here are seven characteristics of luxury brands:the representative of wealth; the

showcase of aesthetic; individuation; specific location; the distance from mass public;

historic reputation; the representative of top quality.

4. Luxury Brands Vs. Non-luxury Brands

Comparing to luxury brands, the most obvious difference lies on price. Behind the

distance on price, we can see the brand effect. During the long history, many brands

were knocked out, finally, brands like Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Hermes were left.

Their brand effect is just

Like a kind of halo effect, as an feature that can be easiest known by customers,

brands can directly affect the customers’ judgment on other features. So to be honest,

the biggest difference of non-luxury brands and luxury brands is that luxury brands are

unique, scarce and rare. Naturally due to the existence of these features, luxury

brands are more convenient to cause brand effect, and cause effect in international

marketing.

In addition, we should consider why luxury brands can remain invincible. As far

as I am concerned, the main reason is that the luxury brand products are carrying the

designer’s thought, which is their attitude towards fashion and their unique

understanding of fashion. But that’s exactly the biggest gap between luxury brands

and non-luxury brands. Every product from luxury brands is with spiritual, it was

produced after thousands of design and carefully production with high standard. They

are unique and delicate. On the contrary, in Chinese market, we can see fake luxury

goods everywhere, which were mainly manufactured in a rough way. If we think

carefully, we can find the reason behind this phenomenon-that’s because there are no

design idea in Chinese. We don’t have our own design, so we had to copy others.

Of course, non-luxury brands have their own advantages. Because of the low

price, they are destined to be accepted by a larger amount of people. There are also

non-luxury of high quality. When our first lady Liyuan Peng visit foreign country, she

wore domestic brand clothing and bag, which is a good sample of younger generation.

Simple and economic is the traditional quality of our Chinese, we don’t need to pursuit

luxury brands as to show off. Like Mrs Peng, who give us a good sample of

connotation of culture, temperament and good will by her heart. That is also a kind of

beauty, we don’t have to use luxury to package ourselves.

All in all, luxury is like a double-edged sword. We must hold a right attitude to

treat it. We can neither totally blame bad phenomenon on it, nor can we excessively

worship it. We can treat it as a goal that we strive for, which may lead us to a better

life.