Researchers dig into why global consumers buy luxury goods
A young woman in Tokyo pays 243,000 Yen for a Louis Vuitton
suitcase emblazoned with the company’s iconic monogram. A continent away,
another woman purchases the same suitcase at the company’s store on New York’s
5th Avenue for the equivalent price in dollars, $3,000. Why? What motivates
their purchases? And, do those motivations hinge on their location?
That is precisely what University of Delaware researcher
Jaehee Jung and her collaborators at universities in nine other countries
sought to answer. Their findings published recently in the journal, Psychology
& Marketing, compared consumers’ perceptions of luxury.