Luxury consumption motivations

: a cross-cultural study between France and China

Abstract

During the last decade, international luxury brands have been expanding continuously to new markets, transferring the industry’s gravity center from West to East. The present research aims at investigating how consumers’ motivations for buying luxury products differ in developed and emerging markets and what role culture plays in those differences. More precisely, the paper focuses on two main actors of this industry: France (the first country offering luxury-branded products) and China (hosting the world major luxury consumers). An online questionnaire assessed Status & Conspicuousness, Conformity, Uniqueness, Hedonism and Quality motivations of 95 French and 72 Chinese students. Results were statistically analyzed trough a series of independent-sample t-tests and Mann-Whitney U tests. Conformity appears to be a dominant motivation in China, while Hedonism and Quality motivations prevail in France. Moreover, Uniqueness comes out as equally important in both markets. Cultural orientation was measured trough individuals’ self-construal and doesn’t have a significant influence in the previous results. The researcher proposes that differences in motivations might alternatively depend on luxury knowledge and on the industry development stage in a country. Further investigation concerning the causes of motivation differences is crucial. Finally, this study derives specific management implications for international luxury brands fighting to increase availability while keeping exclusivity.

Date of Award	18 Jun 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Veronique Tran (Supervisor)