tailieunhanh - Sách Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence

This paper draws upon data from a research project undertaken in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. vii The focus on consumers/end users to develop a broad and situated view of the consumption of counterfeit goods led the data collection to focus primarily on counterfeit versions of leisure goods (., fashion clothes, music, film, games, and other software). The distinction between leisure goods and other types of counterfeit items is not merely one of convenience. Leisure items, we believe, are a productive focus for understanding the purchase and consumption of counterfeit/pirated goods for several key reasons. . | Young Jee Han Joseph C. Nunes Xavier Drèze Signaling Status with Luxury Goods The Role of Brand Prominence This research introduces brand prominence a construct reflecting the conspicuousness of a brand s mark or logo on a product. The authors propose a taxonomy that assigns consumers to one of four groups according to their wealth and need for status and they demonstrate how each group s preference for conspicuously or inconspicuously branded luxury goods corresponds predictably with their desire to associate or dissociate with members of their own and other groups. Wealthy consumers low in need for status want to associate with their own kind and pay a premium for quiet goods only they can recognize. Wealthy consumers high in need for status use loud luxury goods to signal to the less affluent that they are not one of them. Those who are high in need for status but cannot afford true luxury use loud counterfeits to emulate those they recognize to be wealthy. Field experiments along with analysis of market data including counterfeits support the proposed model of status signaling using brand prominence. Keywords luxury status conspicuous consumption brand prominence branding reference groups associative dissociative motives counterfeit goods The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength and the means of showing pecuniary strength and so of gaining or retaining a good name are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods. Thorstein Veblen The Theory of the Leisure Class 1899 p. 51 In the middle ages sumptuary laws specified in minute detail what each social class was permitted and forbidden to wear including the maximum price an article of clothing could cost. For example grooms could not wear cloth that exceeded two marks and knights could wear apparel up to six marks value but were forbidden from wearing gold ermine or jeweled embroidery Berry 1994 . The rationale was to reserve particular .