What Happened To Burberry's Luxury?

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.

Andy Warhol, a pioneer in the visual art movement once said: “Whenever people and civilizations get degenerate and materialistic, they always point at the outward beauty and riches and say that if what they were doing was bad, they wouldn’t being doing so well, being so rich and beautiful” (Warhol, 1975). Throughout history, luxury emerged as early as civilization did. For old Romans, the concept of luxury was a “disruptive power of desire”. They set up the first laws about luxury: “how much could be spent on banquets and adornment” (Ward, 2011). Since the rise of Christianity, luxury stared to changed its meaning to be related to lust and sexuality. Until 17th century, perspectives of

The weakness of Burberry is the premium price range of their products. Burberry faces a dilemma. Many consumers love the company’s products such as coats, clothing, and bags but they can’t afford to pay for the full price. Others, like Findlay, could afford the price but aren’t moved enough by it to actually pay out their cash. The pricing of goods or services can represent their quality and desirability.

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

Burberry, founded in 1856, is a leading international luxury brand. Burberry designs, manufactures and licenses apparel and accessories for distribution through its own stores and network of prestige retailers worldwide. In early 1998, the new management team at Burberry set out its strategy to reposition and revitalise the brand, which resulted in significantly improved results and strengthened the base to build the business. With continuous growth since last five years, Burberry has faced new challenges of brand sustainability and positioning in a volatile industry (fashion) where customer behaviour is unpredictable. Thus, it requires a strategy that lays foundations for long-term growth and addresses the issues

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

Burberry is uniquely positioned as a classic British apparel brand with high global brand awareness to capture the globalization of consumer demand. Its distinctive luxury brand with international recognition and broad appeal. The company’s outlook for the accessible luxury goods industry remains positive from both a geographic and product point of view. Burberry had become positively hip and popular among a younger demographic. It has a unique history and positioning as the authentic British lifestyle brand and highly successful merchandising and marketing strategy across both appeal and accessories. In 2000 Burberry’s total sales were 225.7 million and by 2003 sales had went up to 593.6 million.

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

The whole society links luxury products to social status. As a result, the psychological aspect, such as “Dream Value” encourages Chinese people to chase luxury products. Xiao Lu states the “Dream Value” that when “a luxury product has the capacity to make consumers dream of possessing it, whatever the nature of their attachment to it. They aspire to become part of what luxury products represent and, as soon as their finances permit, are very happy to fulfill long-held dreams by buying goods and brands that help them satisfy their personal and social aspirations” (Lu, 24). Even though luxury products are extremely expensive compared to the average Chinese economic level, sociological and psychological reasons drive people to the path of

Nowadays, luxury is defined as what someone can afford, food-wise. Americans face an alarmingly growing food inequality problem among different socioeconomic tiers. Many of the country’s lower-class individuals (or bottom tier) are faced with the problem of not being able to properly afford healthier food, while the wealthier (top tier) individuals are eating healthier. Since health foods have been growing in popularity, they are getting more expensive which in turn makes it difficult for poorer people to acquire it. People from the lower socioeconomic tier also have limited opportunities to get educated about the effects of unhealthy foods.