Louis Vuitton Case Study

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.

For years, Louis Vuitton enjoyed high profit margins from the luxury market in Japan until other competitors such as Prada and Gucci entered the market. Counterfeiting also became a threat to the firm’s brand by satisfying consumer demand at lower prices. Other external global environmental problems included highly priced products, limited availability in stores only, and a heavy dependency on the Japanese market (Pearce & Robinson, 2013, p. 14-18). Moreover, “the after-shocks of the global recession were a threat to Louis Vuitton’s luxury business in Japan”, and Japanese women became less interested in the brand’s products (Pearce & Robinson, 2013, p. 14-18). Alternatively, Louis Vuitton could “reinvent itself and regain what used to be its well-attested

Meanwhile, some consumers were also attracted by the counterfeit products, which have the same design and considerable quality. The situation of LV in Japan seems to be fierce, however, with effective solutions, LV can also seize the opportunity to sustain profitability in Japanese market rather than just survive. As it is stated in the case that Japanese consumers had been holding the desire for inexpensive luxury products from Louis Vuitton. Therefore, to solve this problem and attract more customers, LV should strive to make “inexpensive” products by increasing the value of products, lowering the costs and prices, and finally creating high value for the consumers. As the scandal of counterfeit sold on the websites in 2008 led to a decline in the sales of Louis Vuitton products, it can be viewed as a valued opportunity for Louis Vuitton to establish its own business online since it can both add selling channels and empower the company to fight with counterfeiting.

Firms have developed ways to influence consumer demand which effect supply, one such technique is demarketing or the process of reducing consumer demand for a product to a level that the firm can reasonably supply.

The weaknesses of these of competitors are that they must market their programs to new people because they do not already have customers. This is a weakness because bringing in new customers is more expensive than retaining old ones. Another weakness is that they must build facilities in order to offer these programs and services.

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

They have the drawback of customers engaging in cherry-picking and only enabling the distributors to manage low-margin, inexpensive products.

An increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world experiences a rapid cross-border movement of goods, service, technology and capital. Luxury goods industry, serve as one of the most competitive industry, emerging and developing rapidly all the time. To a great extent, globalization promotes the development of luxury goods industry significantly in spite of the big shock hit by several times of economic 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

The risk of generic substitution is also increasing with especially China dominating the production market. Customers will substitute for a generic product if the disposable incomes of the customers reduce resulting in customers willing to trade down for a inferior but cheaper product.

Nevertheless, being a market pioneers also brings numerous disadvantages (Lieberman & Montgomery, 1988). One main disadvantage is that “market pioneers may fail to change their business practices when the market changes” (Lieberman & Montgmery, 1988: 925). Also late movers will free ride on the foundations the market pioneer has created in the beginning.

3》 Current fixed customer channel network is not perfect, and market coverage of its products is low

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

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.

On the other hand, the large market potential has drawn a host of luxury-goods companies to enter the China market, which makes the competition fiercer and fiercer. And it is troublesome for LV that there are plenty of fake goods imitating LV’s style prevailing in China, which are actually not likely to reduce LV’s high-end consumers, but would exert negative influences on consumers’ impression and awareness of LV.