Luxury Brands - a Phenomenon in Asia

How Facebook Marketing is Violating Consumer Privacy The marketing industry is an elaborate network that links companies to their consumers, primarily through written communication. The main objective of marketing is to identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior, and utilize the data to influence consumers to purchase more goods. From a macroenviroment standpoint, the general conditions of a market are heavily dependent on global environmental factors. The most significant factor that influences the markets today is technological advancements. Since the release of Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, and Myspace in the early 2000s, the number of people using social media has increased to over sixty-five percent. The ever-growing dependency on social media platforms, has given marketers the tremendous opportunity to further market potential consumers. Social media marketing is a specific form of marketing that focuses on producing ad content that social media users will post on their own networks. This particular marketing technique is effective because ads and content are created, based on what personal information users post on social media. Firms and organizations that advertise their brands on social media are more likely to increase their customer base and annual revenue. By doing so, companies are able to increase exposure of their brand and widen previous hidden, customer bases. As a marketer, the fine line between right and wrong is often blurred. The amount and

All of those company did well they have their own strength and also their own royalty customer. Therefore, new media is a way for the Sushi Zanmai to attract customer to compete with the other kaiten sushi restaurant. According to the Corinne (2013),The Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) has mention that a business who do not know the potential of the social media will be left behind due to they lack of customer interaction and also customer retention in their business. Consumer and the company’s sales prospects have a various kind of interactive across the multiple touch point in this interactive economy. In this era, customer are always the most important, they expect the organization provide them the thing they want. So that social media have become the platform for customer engagement. Customers are truly engaged when they feel known and this is what the best use of social media can achieve. So, to improve the reputation of Sushi Zanmai, social media is one of the tools that can’t lack of. Sushi Zanmai come out with Facebook and twitter to interact with the public. Due to social media is the platform for them to deal with customer. Moreover, according to Tood (2013), social media is a new ways for food and beverage company to interact with their consumer. Sushi Zanmai use facebook and twitter to keep connect with their customer by provide information of company to the customer and provide a feedback column for their customer to give feedback such as dissatisfied or satisfaction about their products in order to improve their own company and maintain their reputation. According to Thorsten (2010), by using new media, a company can communicate with the consumer, measure their communication by knowing their related purchase behavior. Thus, in this

The use of social media marketing has become a standard way in which organizations advertise their products or services. Social media marketing allows consumers to have immediate access to other consumers reviews or to post a review about a product or service. There is engagement between the company and the consumer (Evans, Dave 2010). Social Media emerged in the late 1980’s when websites such as Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online. Prodigy was first of it’s kind and was known as a ”consumer online service”. Half of the page is devoted to advertising. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Hi5, Bebo and Orkut are all social media platforms that are utilized as platforms today.

Nichevertising Brand consultant and strategist Harish Bijoor of Harish Bijoor Consults loftily terms it "nichevertise vs massvertise". According to him the luxury brands are not for mass consumption and shouldn 't be mass advertised. The social circuit gives them a fresh channel to reach out to their target audience without any noise. "The socialite model of marketing targets the guest lists minus the hard sell," he says.

Foreign Owed Enterprises (WFOE). 5. Distribution focus on physical distribution, including inventory control, warehousing and transportation of goods to customers and online shipping. OROTON page 5 TARGET MARKET 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

mprove inventory policy to reduce amount of time inventory is held from 135 days to at least 100 days by the end of 2016. Conduct research to determine if Canada and South America could be viable places for business. Increase market share by expanding at least 15 stores in Japan and the

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.

The rise of social media has been a global phenomenon since internet giant Facebook began, with one in seven people having a Facebook account (Hennig-Thurau, Hofacker & Bloching 2013). This has had an impact on the marketing environment in several ways, with the two most notable being increased active participation and a strong level of networked interconnectedness (Hennig-Thurau, Hofacker & Bloching 2013). These two changes have shifted the power from the marketer to the consumer, as the regular consumer now has access to vast amounts of information and has the ability to amplify their opinion globally (Labrecque et al. 2013). For this reason, it may be argued that in the 21st century, marketing occurs among consumers, and is no longer purely

consumers have started to avoid traditional ads and increasingly connect to their social networks to guide buying decisions. Therefore, advertisers might consider prioritizing social media as an advertising strategy to reach potential consumers as 74% of consumers rely on social media to inform their purchasing decisions. Perhaps a case from McDonald Taiwan have illustrated how advertisers can connect with the audience in an effective way by creating appropriate content on social media. The brand wanted to connect with people on an emotion and encourage the consumer to link McDonald's with feelings of love and togetherness. The brand took advantage of Mother’s day. It has decided to surprise three employees who cannot make it home for the mother’s day with a visit from their mom. They captured on the film the mother's journey and the employee emotional reaction as they found their moms walking into restaurants. As the result, it has generated 7 million views and 170,000 shares in 2 weeks. More importantly, it has reached 13 million potential customers as Martin (2012) suggests that the increased awareness leads to potentially greater sales and markets share in the future. In this advertising campaign, Facebook played a crucial role in term of auto-playing feature, not to mention, Facebook has significant popularity and considerable

1. 2.2.4 Regional feature In the luxury goods industry, the rapid development has brought the market more brands and the latest design products. Industry matures has caused the accelerated development of a wide range of luxury goods (Chiari, 2009). However, one thing was constant, no matter how much increased production costs, the large luxury brand of origin will not be transfer. Long cultural history is an integral part of the luxury brand, and the origin of products have also brought a certain cultural value for luxury goods (Heine, 2012).Especially for Asian consumers, it seems that in the far west, craft superb tailoring and rich cultural history of the western area are the pursue of Chinese consumers (Sombart, 2001).Louis Vuitton 's president has said that (2013), “when customers buy our products, they expect Western quality. The mystery of the origin of our brand is closely linked with our brand”. Although with the close of trade, many luxury goods in the production and sales process will cooperation with other country’s companies, the final product definitely launch in the country of origin. Gucci is a legendary brand in Florence (Italy), and it will also strictly control the production done in Tuscany (Italy), to ensure pure and high-quality products (Gucci, 2015). Therefore, a regional feature has brought an intangible value and more local cultural characteristics to the luxury goods.

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

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

In terms of social culture, for one thing, the China consumers are attracted by middle- and high-end products and somehow more attracted by French luxury goods, and they believe that the higher the price, the better the quality (Yuval, Vinay and Cathy, 2011, para7) (Exhibit 1). For another thing, the traditional virtue of thrift is rooted in the mindset of the Chinese, with which some of the rich in China indicate that they would not spend a large sum of money to get a product.

8 No. 2, pp. 134-48 Chadha, R. and Husband, P. (2006), The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair with Luxury.

3. Chinese consumers behavior In order to build their brands better in China, the decision makers should consider deep reason of market changing and consumers behavior. As one of the world 's four ancient civilizations. China is a remarkable country with very long history and prominent traditional culture. Gong, D’Alessandro and Johnson’s argue that, for a long time, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Legalism and other ideologies shaped Chinese traditional culture. In particular, face, harmony and guanxi are fundamental cultural values (2014). These traditional Chinese cultural values and Political ideologies play important role in consumer purchase behavior, which has significant impacts on purchase intention on luxury products. Face, guanxi and ethnocentrism will be discussed in this section.