luxury

Old fashioned wood and graphite pencils were once how we all wrote, but hit their popularity peak decades ago. They are high maintenance - as soon as you start using a sharpened pencil, its point begins to dull and the thickness of the…

Marketers know that a key element in many purchases is to signal something about the buyer. A Toyota Prius, for example, says that its owner is concerned about the environment. Expensive luxury brands let the world know the buyer has…

Evolutionary psychology suggests that we humans are all about conspicuous consumption. Displaying expensive or hard to find items raises our status and may suggest a higher degree of "fitness" as a mate (i.e., health and resources).…

When it comes to products, "complicated" is rarely a compliment. Would you buy a computer advertised as "complicated?" A piece of furniture that claimed, "complex assembly required?" An automobile that promoted the fact that it had a…

Luxury brands face a difficult challenge: they must be exclusive, and usually expensive, to maintain their elite status. At the same time, a brand that has extremely limited distribution may not be able to acquire or maintain the…

The better the product, one expects, the fewer the flaws one will find. That's why Lexus is at the top of the quality surveys, and why Yugo went out of business. That's perfect logic, until you get to true luxury products. One of the…

What makes a luxury brand? In The Luxury Strategy, Jean-Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien tell us in great detail what distinguishes "luxury" from "premium" and the merely expensive. And, as one might expect, our emotions play a huge role…