Identification Of The Problem Concerning Second Hand Luxury Goods

This expansion demonstrates how the luxury industry is now run by massive corporations whose focus is only on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and most importantly, PROFITS! With growth and expansion, has come a decrease in quality and rarity. The luxury garments produced are mostly not handmade but are even outsourced to large factories in places such as China and Turkey. Also, to meet quarterly turnover projections, “designers churn(ed) out increasingly trendy collections of clothes, handbags, and shoes.” (Thomas, Pg. 246) With hundreds of new stores around the globe the surplus of designer labeled merchandise is immense hence, the proliferation of outlet malls.

From consumer’s perspective, the motivation of their purchasing high-end products is complicated. According to the report of Mintel (Academic.mintel.com, 2013), which showed that the reason why a large number of customs have purchased luxury merchandise in UK. There were 44 percent of female interviewees and 48 percent of male interviewees bought high-end goods due to the good quality. In addition, 31 percent of men and 18 percent of women consider the sophisticated technique

The consumption of luxury goods in China is mounting sharply. Not only those born to elite families, but also many common people are greedy for luxury brands (China, a Booming

Sociocultural: In the recent years, the desire to appear wealthy has attributed to the increased popularity in luxury products. Also, the desire for luxury goods was promoted by effective advertising and TV programming that promoted conspicuous consumption to middle-income consumers. Middle-income consumers also tend to “reward” themselves with luxury items.

The author who inspired the topic of this thesis is Dana Thomas. As a fashion writer, Dana Thomas, has analyzed the changes in luxury fashion business. Thomas has been writing about fashion for the past twenty-five years in various journals such as Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Financial Times, and more. Dana Thomas’ two books, Deluxe and Gods and Kings, are the inspiration for this thesis. Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre goes into great detail the secrets of the leading luxury industry brands, namely Prada, Gucci and Burberry, to showcase the “New Luxury” of today and how “luxury lost its luster” by featuring the manufacturing and logistical processes. Thomas exposes that many luxury brands use the same Asian factories that mass-market retailers employ, which raises questions concerning quality and craftsmanship for luxury brands.

Definitions of luxury have continuously changed across centuries, and will likely change as luxury evolves in the years to come. It can be difficult to give a precise definition seeing as luxury is all but static. Looking at luxury in an historical context provides insights on different perceptions and views on the subject. In "The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation", Christopher Berry provides an analysis of the evolution of luxury as a moral concern tracing back from Ancient Greece up to you our age.

It is hard to imagine that after the financial crisis swept across Europe, many great transitional enterprises had to face collapse and bankrupt while the luxury goods industry become more prosperous. Recently, the French luxury goods group LVMH announced their recent business condition. The volume of the first week in October had incredibly increased by 12% the previous week. The Hermes Corporation also said that in order to meet the increasing number of market demand, it would open 15 branch stores in the latter half of the year. These aroused some fierce debates, the public held a skeptical opinion towards the questions: How can the luxury companies maintain their positions? Why didn’t they strike down by financial crisis?

This behavior brings competitive advantages to the European luxury brands. Moreover, customers in different countries have different purchase behaviors. For instance, some countries’ customers are willing to move away from common recognized brand, because they want to purchase more exclusive products. Furthermore, because of the increasing speed of globalization, people are more likely willing to travel between different countries. These travelers will buy luxury good during their trips. In fact, Chinese tourists contributed over one third of sales in Europe. The luxury goods industry should notice to adjust the actual demand between local people and tourists in Europe

Economic: The luxury goods industry quickly rebounded following the United States economic downturn in 2001, partly due to the increasing trend of middle-income American consumers demanding luxury at every level. There will always be a luxury consumer, and they’ll continue to spend whether there are wars

The overall sales of luxury goods in the year 2009 is expected to be more than US$150 billion and Asia contributes 10% to it. The concept of luxury is now not confined to only to Europe and US, the Asian subcontinent contributes majorly to it, with India and China as the newly emerging markets. Professor James Twitchell (2002) comments on the democratization of luxury and the changing consumer psychology These new customers for luxury are younger than clients of the old luxe used to be, they are far more numerous, they make their money far sooner, and they are far more flexible in financing and fickle in choice. They do not

Experiences the customers perceive from their products are evident. Customers using Michael Kors products gain the feeling of belongingness to the community. Another experiences gained by customers while dressing according to the last trends of fashion are satisfaction and self-confidence. However, the dilemma between middle, upper-middle class and luxury class exists, such as people from luxury class want to differentiate and the accessibility of different collection from the same designer can distort their

Being a an international brand, there is a level of dependence on Italian markets with 90% of the stores situated in Italy and the equalisation crosswise over America, Paris and distribution over different countries of Asia, Europe, Canada and others. In spite of the fact that the model promotes luxury end products, it has been distinguished there is a related low level of client management which couples this recommending there is a need to take a shot at administration to guarantee a complete shopping background and guarantee rehash business inside of the current client base (Liesch, et al.,

With concern to 26 to 45 years old consumers, we believe that a personal shopper service and made ​​to order service might be useful solutions in order to have their loyalty giving them specific services that only luxury brands do. In fact, that way they can get the most out of their luxury buying experience. To finish, we also suggest the creation of events during which the can purchase new collections in advance, generally the day before the collections are officially out in stores.

Health crises are indeed exogenous shocks having a significant impact on the turnover of luxury companies. In 2002, following the SARS outbreak, the company Richmont (n°2 worldwide luxury) saw its sales in East Asia and Southeast decrease over 8%. Indeed, in times of uncertainty, consumers buy less luxuries, and secondly, the SARS crisis has resulted in a drop in tourism in Asia, furthermore tourists are also privileged consumer products luxury because they have sufficient purchasing power and luxury products are comparatively cheaper in less developed Asian countries.

The Luxury goods industry is a very wide industry comprising of products from watches, jewellery, perfumes, expensive wines to yachts, expensive pens, and clothes. Goods for which demand increases more proportionally as compared to income, are known as ‘Luxury goods’, in contrast to a "necessity goods", for which demand increases less proportionally to income.