Experience and attitude towards luxury brands consumption in an emerging market

In: European business review, Band 32, Heft 5, S. 909-936

Abstract

Purpose
Conventionally, consumers perceive luxury products as a means of displaying their wealth and prosperity. Consumption of luxury products has usually been considered the prerogative of the Western world. Although there are a number of studies capturing the pre-purchase and purchase behaviour of consumers, there is a dearth of quality studies that have been conducted in this field to understand the post-purchase behaviour of consumers towards luxury brands, especially in the context of young shoppers in an emerging market context. Studying the post-purchase behaviour of shoppers is important to understand their experience with the brand. A negative experience could lead to a post-purchase dissonance, which in turn could lead to an unbalanced or distorted attitude towards the brand and other marketing stimuli. Keeping this in consideration, the purpose of this study is to explore the experiences and attitudes of young shoppers in India towards luxury consumption.


Design/methodology/approach
The study captured responses from young shoppers of Chandigarh and its satellite cities located in the relatively prosperous northwest region of India. The data were collected from 200 participants through a structured questionnaire that was based on an adapted "Attitude towards the concept of luxury" scale by Dubois and Laurent (1994) and "Brand Experience" Scale by Brakus et al. (2009). The structural equation modeling technique was applied to test the proposed model.


Findings
The empirical results indicate that sensory, intellectual, behavioural and affective experience play a significant role in building the attitude of consumers towards luxury brands.


Research limitations/implications
The study selected university students from Chandigarh (India) Tricity region as target respondents, which may limit the generalisability of the results to other target respondents in different regions of India or other countries.


Practical implications
The study is useful for researchers, academicians, marketers and retailers of luxury brands, as it gives fresh insights into understanding the consumer behaviour of a young segment towards the consumption of luxury brands in the post-purchase scenario, especially in the context of an emerging market.


Originality/value
The uniqueness of the study lies in the fact that it examines the post-purchase behaviour of a segment consisting of young, educated and aspirational individuals in one of the world's fastest-growing major economies.