Louis Vuitton : The World's Largest Individual Consumers Of Luxury Brands

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.

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

in 2011, and their spending jumped by 13 percent. Compare this to single women, whose spending grew less than 2 percent, and the average Japanese consumer, whose spending dropped.5 Young men, it seems, saw the March 11 disaster as a good reason to live for the moment, and Japan’s luxury goods market appears to be a beneficiary. Finally, when we look at segmentation by income, Japanese who spend more than a million yen (about $12,000) a year on luxury goods are more than three times as likely to say they are switching to high-end brands than to low-end brands (Exhibit 3). Those who spend less than half as much are reporting the opposite.

LVMH has a wide range of consumers from different backgrounds. It is imperative that they are aware of religion, race, culture, and buying habits in every country. For instance, worldwide people are more dependent on the Internet, signifying that the methods of how people purchase goods are changing.

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

Coach has a very strong brand image. They continue to gain new customers and because of devotion and loyalty they are able to keep repeat customers. Brand image can be considered everything to customers when searching for a handbag. Industries that manufacture handbags must be able to provide what is considered a “chic service”, while continuing a “thriving business” (Foster, 2006). Due to the brand image that Coach has they are able to introduce new and more risky handbags with the confidence that most current consumers will continue to purchase their

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

In Japan, the costs of LVMH handbags cost approximately 40% more than in France. This started a growing market to distribute bags from France to Japan for resale at a cheaper price. Arnault believes that the producers of LVMH’s goods need to be unrestrained by financial matters in order to produce extremely high quality products. To keep the brand management of highly priced and high quality goods, LVMH needs to expand to the younger new money of the Asian market. The high quality is also a result of the mentality that “Made in France” is perceived as high western quality. LVMH does not want to lower the labor costs because there would be a similar direction of the quality.

Leveraging Louis Vuitton’s pre-existing patronage from the Maharajas and the Indian elite that travel to Paris for luxury brand purchases, the company decided to enter the Indian market with hopes of capitalizing on their existing brand name and maintaining double-digit growth rate. The company believed that India had the desired potential to assist the company in achieving its sales target while establishing sustainable enterprise within the Indian Market.

Conformity can be seen as one of the most apparent characters that exists in asian countries that are influenced by collectivism. Compared with western consumers, Chinese customers prefer to follow others’ choices or suggestions, especially famous stars’ styles. This is a kind of consumption idea that led by group guide or social pressure, which makes individuals tend to coincide with the majority. In this situation, many consumers tend to follow others instead of individual thinking when making decisions. Normally, it appears that consumers would tend to choose stores that attract more clients and select brands with high market share. For example, I found that in Dior Homme store, the star styles are mentioned frequently by Chinese buyers. Besides, some famous star style, like the tippet of Burberry are always out of stock thanks to Chinese purchase.

LVMH’s brand portfolio is a catalogue of the finest things money can buy. Arnault said, “A Star brand is timeless, modern, fast growing and highly profitable.”[iii] LVMH has positioned its brands strongly in the luxury segment offering more than 50 different brands under their five core competencies. LVMH has been successful through all of their various brands in their portfolio giving them each their independence and creativity. “LVMH is well known for leaving much operational and marketing freedom to the various brands it owns.”[iv] “LVMH has done an excellent job of brand positioning, says Ben Cavender, senior analyst at China Market Research Group. It has succeeded in securing the particularly enviable position of gaining a following among the top percentage of China’s wealthy. As the financial crisis stretches on, LVMH customers in China still have money to spend.[v] “LVMH’s brand imaging, which relies heavily on pushing its European heritage, is so successful that it has benefited other brands by proxy, says Paul French, one of the founders of Access Asia, a group dedicated to tracking regional consumer and marketing trends. “Everyone hangs on the coattails of Louis Vuitton’s brand imaging in China.”[vi]

Luxury product sales boost in the emerging marketing like China, which has extraordinary growth and strong potential consumers for the development of luxury goods in the China market. With gradually lower and lower increase of revenue in the European countries, Louis Vuitton (abridged as LV in the following sections) commits itself to set up more stores in China. However, LV is faced with the problems of declining profits in China, which urges it to adjust its entry strategy into the China market. In this case, this report will focus on distinguishing the factors that influence LV’s development in China and

Emerging markets- The 2 biggest emerging markets for luxury fashion products are China and India, which is a great opportunity for the brand to explore and