Democratizing Luxury

Democratizing Luxury explores the interplay between advertising and consumption in modern Japan by investigating how Japanese companies at key historical moments assigned value, or "luxury," to mass-produced products as an important business model. Japanese name-brand luxury evolved alongside a consumer society emerging in the late nineteenth century, with iconic companies whose names became associated with quality and style. At the same time, Western ideas of modernity merged with earlier artisanal ideals to create Japanese connotations of luxury for readily accessible products. Businesses manufactured items at all price points to increase consumer attainability, while starkly curtailing production for limited editions to augment desirability. Between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, control over family disposable income transformed Japanese middle-class women into an important market. Growth of purchasing power among women corresponded with Japanese goods diffusing throughout the empire, and globally after the Asia-Pacific war (1931–1945). This book offers case studies that examine affordable luxury consumer items often advertised to women, including drinks, beauty products, fashion, and timepieces. Japanese companies have capitalized on affordable luxury since a flourishing domestic mercantile economy began in the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), showcasing brand-name shops, renowned artisans, and mass-produced woodblock prints by famous artists. In the late nineteenth century, personalized service expanded within department stores like Mitsukoshi, Shiseidō cosmetic counters, and designer boutiques. Shiseidō now globally markets invented traditions of omotenashi, Japanese ”values” of hospitality expressed in purchasing and consuming its products. In postwar times, when a thriving democracy and middle-class were tied to greater disposable income and consumerism, companies rebuilt a growing consumer base among cautious shoppers: democratizing luxury at reasonable prices and maintaining business patterns of accessibility, high quality, and exemplary service. Nationalism amid economic success soon blended with myths of unique Japanese identity in a mass consumer society, suffused by commodity fetishism with widely available brand names. As the first comprehensive history of iconic Japanese name brands and their unique connotations of luxury and accessibility in modern Japan and elsewhere, Democratizing Luxury explores company histories and reveals strategies that lead customers to consume these alluring commodities.

Luxury is in fashion and is now to be found within almost every retail, manufacturing and service sector. New terms qualifying luxury regularly appear such as 'premium', 'ultra-premium' and 'hyperluxe'. Today, luxury is everywhere - but if everything is 'luxury' then surely the term itself has no meaning? What really is a luxury product, a luxury brand or a luxury company? The Luxury Strategy is a definitive new work that sets the record straight. Luxury is as old as humanity and it is only by a thorough understanding of the genuine concept, that it is possible to define a rigorous set of rules for the effective management of luxury brands and products. The Luxury Strategy rationalizes the management of this new business concept based on the highly original methods that were used to transform small family businesses such as Ferrari, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Chanel, Bulgari, Gucci and Prada, into global brands. The Luxury Strategy explains the difference between 'premium' and 'luxury', and sets out the rules to be applied to the luxury marketing mix (the opposite of those for classic marketing). It describes how to implement a luxury strategy within a company and delivers clear principles for becoming - and remaining - 'luxury'.

Discover the secrets to successful luxury brand management with this bestselling guide written by two of the world's leading experts on luxury branding, Jean-Noël Kapferer and Vincent Bastien, providing a unique blueprint for luxury brands and companies. Having established itself as the definitive work on the essence of a luxury brand strategy, this book defines the differences between premium and luxury brands and products, analyzing the nature of true luxury brands and turning established marketing 'rules' upside-down. Written by two world experts on luxury branding, The Luxury Strategy provides the first rigorous blueprint for the effective management of luxury brands and companies at the highest level. This fully revised second edition of The Luxury Strategy explores the diversity of meanings of 'luxury' across different markets. It rationalizes those business models that have achieved profitability and unveils the original methods that were used to transform small family businesses such as Ferrari, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Chanel, Armani, Gucci, and Ralph Lauren into profitable global brands. Now with a new section on marketing and selling luxury goods online and the impact of social networks and digital developments, this book has truly cemented its position as the authority on luxury strategy.

The Luxury Market in Brazil provides a holistic and practitioners approach to luxury marketing in Brazil. The book analyses the key challenges and opportunities facing luxury brands, while providing an insight into the skills and competencies to develop and implement effective luxury marketing strategies that are specific to the market in question.

We live in a world obsessed by luxury. Long-distance airlines compete to offer first-class sleeping experiences and hotels recommend exclusive suites where you are never disturbed. Luxury is a rapidly changing global industry that makes the headlines daily in our newspapers and on the internet. More than ever, luxury is a pervasive presence in the cultural and economic life of the West - and increasingly too in the emerging super-economies of Asia and Latin America. Yet luxury is hardly a new phenomenon. Today's obsession with luxury brands and services is just one of the many manifestations that luxury has assumed. In the middle ages and the Renaissance, for example, luxury was linked to notions of magnificence and courtly splendour. In the eighteenth century luxury was at the centre of philosophical debates over its role in shaping people's desires and oiling the wheels of commerce. And it continues to morph today, with the growth of the global super-rich and increasing wealth polarization. From palaces to penthouses, from couture fashion to lavish jewellery, from handbags to red wine, from fast cars to easy money, Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello present the first ever global history of luxury, from the Romans to the twenty-first century: a sparkling and ever-changing story of extravagance, excess, novelty, and indulgence.

Unique and timely, this Research Handbook on Luxury Branding explores and takes stock of the current body of knowledge on luxury branding, as well as offering direction for future research and management in the field. Featuring contributions from an international team of top-level researchers, this Handbook offers analysis and discussion of the profound socioeconomic, psychological, technological and political changes that are affecting the luxury industry, and that will continue to shape its future.

In this Book, the focus will be on redefining the concept of luxury and what it means to us. In the future, luxury will not mean expensive, fancy and branded. As we already know, resources all around the world are becoming scarce. It will not come as a surprise that the fate of humankind appears to be intimately linked to the availability of matter and energy. This is not new. We have to find and develop ways to use them as best as we can. This is where we redefine luxury. Luxury will be the use of material and construction techniques in the best and most sturdy method. We must build to make things last. This is to preserve the remaining resources in the future, and we will be considered as a luxury. we will try to show their ways and solutions to minimize its negative impacts, especially for the future generation and the world. With changing some attitudes that branding systems use and have adapted to, we can provide a method for luxury brands to create value shared by business, communities, individuals, and be control in seizing the opportunities for leadership in the current socio-economic and technological environment and their trajectory for the future.

Meat -- Wheat -- Sugar -- Risk -- Violence -- Metabolism -- Bodies -- Earth -- Acceleration.