Examining fashion brand luxury DNA

Abstract

Although in the fashion industry, luxury brands are the most profitable fastest growing brand segment, they are also the most poorly understood and under investigated (Berthon,Pit, Parent and Berthon 2009 p 45). Luxury, often used synonymously with prestige,holds considerable intangible worth, has enduring positive brand images and is deemed at being at the forefront of design, quality, status and fashion (Juggessur and Cohen 2009).Despite the significance of the luxury sector in terms of the insights it could provide with respect to contemporary business practice and the nature of consumption, it has been recognised that the sector has been under-represented within the academic literature Berthon et al 2009; Fionda and More 2009). One of the issues hampering development is that luxury, its definition, operationalisation and measurement are highly subjective and no agreed definition can be found in the literature (Godey, Lagier and Pederzili 2009;Kapferer and Bastien 2009). This study focuses specifically on this issue within the preeminent luxury fashion brands category. A conceptual model is developed to carefully examine the dimensions and relationships underlying the luxury fashion brand, and is tested across three specific luxury fashion product categories. The study results make important contributions to clarifying the confusion shown in previous luxury brand research, and helps create a useful framework depicting the luxury fashion brand DNA.