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Conceptualizing unconventional luxury
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Conceptualizing unconventional luxury A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Luxury Unconventional luxury Luxury experiences Luxury consumption
How is luxury conceived in a modern and changing world? While luxury is a well-researched area in the domain of consumer goods, research on more consumer-focused forms of luxury is still nascent. Yet today luxury experiences drive the development of luxury markets and inconspicuous, private consumption of luxury is rising. In order to address these developments, this special issue moves beyond conventional understandings of luxury as involving conspicuous status consumption of tangible goods, and focuses instead on how consumers may experience, give, produce, or share luxury, and what luxuriousness implies. The various articles in the special issue addresses topics such as intangible services, hedonic escapes, and everyday pleasures. They also include alternative understandings of exclusivity, and of common goods that have become scarce over time. Together, the articles in the special issue combine to present a broader understanding both of what luxury can be and of what luxury might do for consumers. While previous conventional luxury understanding focus on exclusive status consumption, the different articles in this special issue instead introduce consumer perceptions of luxury for which conventional luxury attributes look markedly or even entirely different.
1. Introduction The world of luxury is undergoing profound changes. Luxury research has long been seen as a traditional field focused on a segment of exclusive consumers and products, only available in a few select locations (Kapferer & Bastien, 2009), later extended to masstige products and a more democratized view of luxury (Danziger, 2005), Lipovetsky and Roux (2003) suggested a more intangible and subjective view of luxury. Changes in society and the rapid development of technology have profoundly altered contemporary consumption styles. According to Forbes (2019), Millennials and younger customers made up one third of all luxury customers in 2019, and this figure is expected to breach 50% by 2024. As the typical luxury consumer shifts from a traditional wealthy customer who buys luxury in a few select stores (Kapferer & Bastien, 2009) to a younger, connected and global consumer, we propose a broadened understanding of luxury that is keeping track with (post)postmodern times of experiential economy (e.g. Pine & Gilmore, 1998), liquid consumption (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2017), social media, digitalization and IoT (e.g. Hoffman & Novak, 2018), consumer deceleration (Husemann & Eckhardt, 2019), sustainability (Lubin & Esty, 2010) and climate change. Such disruptive changes make definitions of luxury inevitably unstable and subject to change over time (Cristini, Kauppinen-Räisänen, Barthod-Prothade, & Woodside, 2017). We further argue that the prevailing reliance on a product-focus to understand luxury consumption is increasingly at odds with the larger field of marketing. Already in the 1970s, market researchers started arguing for a service understanding that reflected a shift from relying only on product features (e.g. Grönroos, 1978; Langeard & Eiglier, 1975; Shostack, 1977). This shift gained traction in the 1980s and 1990s, moving marketing away from just a conventional product-focus (e.g. Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990; Grönroos, 1984; Parasuraman, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.01.058
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Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985). In the last decade, the focus has shifted even more decisively to consumer processes, rather than products, as the basis for value-in-use (Grönroos & Voima, 2013; Lusch, Vargo, & O’Brien, 2007; Vargo & Lusch, 2004), and a recognition of how technological advances result in changes in how consumers interact with companies (Larivière et al., 2017; Wirtz et al., 2018). A similar shift can be found in consumer research. While early research tended to focus on how consumers react to product attributes (e.g. Fishbein, 1963) the last forty years of consumer research have witnessed the development of a rich literature on experiential consumption (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982), ranging from the mundane (Babin, Darden, & Griffin, 1994) to the exceptional (Arnould & Price, 1993). Common to this research is a focus on consumer identity and self (e.g. Belk, 1988), emotions (e.g. Canniford & Shankar, 2013), activities and experiences (e.g. Woermann & Rokka, 2015). The last two decades have also seen a decisive shift to recognizing the consumer as a value creator (Grönroos & Voima, 2013; Vargo & Lusch, 2004), that value-inuse emerges in the customers’ processes rather than being produced by the firm (Grönroos, 2008), and that customers ultimately decide on whether an offering carries any value (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). As this overview of the last decades of marketing and consumer research shows, there has been an increased focus on the role(s) of customers, customers’ emotions and experiences, and the importance of services, which could cross-fertilize future luxury research in moving beyond its main focus on products (Ko, Costello, & Taylor, 2019). Han, Nunes, and Dreze (2010) point out that the very idea of luxury is that it represents something more than just the product quality, which is also why it sells at a higher price than just the functional price. If luxury were really about product features, then the price would reflect the functional price and scarcity of the product, which is not the case (Han et al., 2010; Kapferer & Bastien, 2009). Instead, luxury is to a large
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Fig. 1. Differences in conceptualizations of luxury.
(Hemetsberger, von Wallpach, & Bauer, 2012), inconspicuous luxury (Eckhardt, Belk, & Wilson, 2015; Walters & Carr, 2019), hyper-personalized luxury goods (Rosenbaum, Ramirez, Campbell, & Klaus, 2019), or the luxury of giving (instead of having) and related processes of selfand other-transformation (Llamas & Thomsen, 2016). Despite these attempts at grasping luxury in a different way than traditional luxury research has done, and in order to pay tribute to the fact that whatever could be in the research gap was yet to be unearthed and named, we - the editors of this special issue - decided to call for research about ‘unconventional luxury’. With all contributions to the special issue in place, it is now time to identify what unconventional luxury (research) is all about. To this end, in the following section we discuss the different focal aspects of traditional versus unconventional luxury conceptualizations which have emerged when the articles in this special issue unraveled the concept of unconventional luxury. While traditional conceptualizations of luxury have focused more on luxury in terms of being ontologically scarce, product-focused and receptive, we find instead that research on unconventional conceptualizations of luxury focuses more on luxury in terms of being epistemologically scarce, experiential and agentic. It is important to note that we do not intend to outline a comprehensive typology, but rather some conceptually contrasting paths along which traditional and unconventional notions of luxury typically differs. These paths and focal aspects of different conceptualizations of luxury are illustrated in Fig. 1 and further elaborated in the following sections. From product focused to experiential: Traditional luxury research focuses on luxury as defined by product features that serve needs beyond what is necessary (Sombart, 1922). Unfortunately, today even clean water, air and food may be luxuries for different times, places, and peoples (Cristini and Kauppinen-Räisänen, 2020). As illustrated in Fig. 1, traditional understandings of luxury focus on high-quality products selling at a high price and giving the owner prestige based on their public or shared symbolism (Ko et al., 2019). This is also evidenced by Han et al. (2010, p. 16), who state that “Luxury goods are traditionally defined as goods such that the mere use or display of a particular branded product brings the owner prestige apart from any functional utility”. In contrast to these traditional product-focused views, the articles in this special issue introduce unconventional conceptualizations of luxury with a focus on how luxury is experienced (e.g. Kreuzer, Cado, & Raïes, 2020; von Wallpach, Hemetsberger, Thomsen, and Belk (2020). Instead of focusing on shared public meanings linked to a conspicuously consumed product or brand, unconventional luxury focuses on fleeting private meanings attached to an ephemeral experience of luxury in however brief moments. So from an unconventional perspective on luxury, luxury is an idiosyncratic experience and rests in the eyes of the beholder, instead of serving as a
extent a social construct with perceived benefits beyond the product quality (Kapferer, 2010; Roper, Caruana, Medway, & Murphy, 2013), and changes with societal developments. Hence we identify a research gap that addresses luxury as a social construct, the value of which depends on consumer perceptions and how they construct luxury in times of climate change, technological and societal disruptions. Building on this situation, we argue that a more comprehensive understanding of luxury might be fruitful to reflect the rapid developments in society and technology, in line with calls for researchers to understand marketing horizontally rather than to resort to “academic silos” (Holmqvist & Diaz Ruiz, 2017, p. 801). As early as 1977, Shostack published a seminal article in Journal of Marketing called “Breaking free from product-marketing” (Shostack, 1977). More than 40 years later, we argue that it is high time for luxury marketing to follow suit. In paraphrasing Shostack’s call, we do not aim to replace current definitions of luxury, but rather to enrich our understanding with a contemporary view that adds an experiential, fluid and ephemeral view of luxuriousness to current sociomaterial notions of traditional and masstige luxury. To accomplish this task, this special issue moves beyond the classical idea of luxury as consumption of conspicuous products and brands, and includes a focus on how consumers experience, give, produce, or share - rather than own and display – luxury. This focus includes intangible services and everyday pleasures; activities and moments; and even common goods that have become scarce. The combined contribution of the articles in this special issue consists of a broader understanding of what luxury can be, as well as of what luxury can do for consumers. Below, we first discuss how three focal aspects of conceptualizations of luxury differ in traditional vs. unconventional perspectives on luxury. We next outline each of the articles in this special issue on unconventional luxury and detail how they contribute to advancing new insights into the concept. 1.1. Luxury revisited Notions of luxury have been constructed differently in different contexts showing the dynamic nature of this construct, always in motion (Kapferer, 2008; Mortelmans, 2005). Lately, new and unconventional notions of luxury are emerging to shift the focus from “having-tobeing and from owning-to-experiencing” (Cristini et al., 2017, p. 101) and although empirical investigations of unconventional luxury are still scarce, a few studies have emerged since Lipovetsky and Roux (2003) first suggested that the concept of luxury should evolve into an intangible and subjective understanding. These studies investigate the link between luxury experiences and states or processes of self 2
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even consumers with limited (physical) agency and how it enriches their lives in difficult and liminal phases. Yet another context quite different from consumers’ experiences of luxury in everyday life, is the hospital environment within which Kreuzer et al. (2020) investigate luxury as moments of care. Based on 30 phenomenological interviews with patients of a luxury ophthalmic clinic they illustrate how interpersonal interactions contribute to luxury experiences of healthcare consumers. Luxury experienced as moments of care emerges in short-lived and prosocial interpersonal interactions between healthcare consumers and medical staff through authentic presence, balanced power relationships, and interpersonal synchrony. Thus, the authors conclude that ‘true’ luxury resides in the experience of humanity in interpersonal interactions, which surpasses the material luxury traditionally investigated in luxury research. The study suggests the establishment of a ‘culture of care’, which can prove useful for health-care managers, their personnel, and patients, and at the same time for managers and customers in other service environments. Furthermore, several studies of this special issue focus on the agentic aspect of luxury and illustrate how experiential luxury through relatively under-researched practices (such as salsa dancing, social media lurking, or re-decorating). For example, Leban et al. (2020) contribute to our understanding of unconventional luxury through investigating the transformational effects of consumers’ social media lurking practices on luxury consumption. Since contemporary luxury brands (as well as non-luxury brands) extensively use social media channels as marketing tools, understanding how consumers engage with luxury brands online is becoming increasingly important. Based on sixteen qualitative interviews with luxury brand Instagram followers who have not, or only rarely consumed luxuries, the authors identify how practices of lurking transform luxury consumption. The article identifies four luxury brand lurking practices on social media: compassing, curating, collecting, and conversing. These lurking practices have a transformational effect on luxury consumption through dematerialization (i.e. physical material properties of luxury brands become secondary to their virtual representations) as well as through re-materialization (i.e. real-world objects and activities are imbued with digital properties unavailable in the physical world). Another example of an agentic approach to luxury is presented by Holmqvist et al. (2020) who contribute to the special issue by analyzing how hedonic escapism can facilitate luxury experiences. Based on a three-year ethnographic study within the sphere of salsa dancing, they theorize the concept of “moments of luxury” as a brief and temporary hedonic escape from the worries of everyday life. Contrasting the prevailing individual focus in the luxury literature, the authors describe the moment of luxury as a collectively based, consumer-driven experience. The study agrees with previous findings that exclusivity is key to luxury, but extends this understanding by identifying an alternative form of exclusivity, in the form of exclusivity-by-practice instead of the more conventional exclusivity-by-price. Focusing on the consumer experience, the findings unravel an unconventional form of luxury that combines aspects of more traditional luxury such as the aesthetic dresses and movement and the authentic heritage, with the more unconventional exclusivity-by-practice in achieving temporally brief, hedonic escapes from everyday life. In another look at unconventional luxury practices, Turunen et al. (2020) recognize that consumers are taking on new roles in luxury, and can be sellers as well as consumers. To advance this understanding of the consumer roles, they investigate the act of selling rather than consuming luxury goods and its effects on empowerment and enactment of social roles. Based on eighteen qualitative interviews with sellers of second-hand luxury, the authors examine the meanings and values attached to the process of selling luxury goods. The results show that the act of reselling luxury goods might alter the symbolic value of the item and of the self (i.e. detachment from past symbolic meaning, divestment from emotional value, gaining financial empowerment). Further, the authors extend the understanding of second-hand
way for the masses (Han et al., 2010) or members of the upper class (Kastanakis & Balabanis, 2012; Okonkwo, 2009; Truong, Simmons, McColl, & Kitchen, 2008) to demonstrate their prestige, wealth, power, or status. From ontological scarcity to epistemological scarcity: In traditional conceptualizations, luxury is often presented as being a limited resource, while in unconventional conceptualizations we posit that luxury may be presented as being only restricted by the perceptual abilities of the consumer. Consequently, in traditional conceptualization of luxury, there is a focus on ontological scarcity in terms of luxury being expensive, (individually) owned, and accessible to only to the few (Kapferer & Bastien, 2009). As early luxury research by Berry (1994, p. 41) states “a luxury good is a widely desired (because not yet widely attained) good that is believed to be ‘pleasing’”. On the other hand, what we label epistemological scarcity focuses instead on the rareness of the luxury encounter, which in principle is accessible to many as long as they are mindful of it, as it can be found in the most unexpected contexts and triggered inexpensively (e.g. Banister, Roper, & Potavanich, 2020; Holmqvist, Diaz Ruiz, & Peñaloza, 2020; Kreuzer et al., 2020; von Wallpach et al., 2020). Here, in order for luxury to emerge, it is more important that the luxury ‘object’ is possessed, i.e. internalized and selfrelevant (Belk, 1988), than that it is owned or precious to others than the consumer who experiences it. From receptive to agentic: Last but not least, traditional conceptualizations of luxury position the consumer as being receptive to luxury, while unconventional conceptualizations of luxury promote the agentic notion of luxury experiences (e.g. Banister et al., 2020; Holmqvist et al., 2020; Leban, Seo, & Voyer, 2020; Turunen, Cervellon, & Carey, 2020). Along these lines, research by Appadurai (1988, p. 38) offered a definition of luxury goods emphasizing their role as social markers, asserting that their “principal use is rhetorical and social, goods that are simply incarnated signs”. Consequently, the receiver of such signs is equipped with a symbolically charged good, which constitutes luxury that does not require any agency in order to be considered luxury. Instead of acquiring existing luxury products and brands that are symbolically charged through for example marketing maneuvers, unconventional luxury focuses on performed, constructed, enacted meanings of luxury experiences. While we termed this focus of unconventional luxury ‘agentic’, it is important to note that agency does not require the consumers to be overly resourceful in terms of physical or monetary means. As Sudbury-Riley, Hunter-Jones, Al-Abdin, Lewin, and Spence (2020) show, even individuals with very limited physical capacity – in their case those in hospice care – can experience and cherish luxury that is stripped of any product or status focus. Consequently, from an unconventional luxury perspective, consumers are empowered to influence where, how and how often their lives are enriched by experiences of luxury. 2. Advancing unconventional luxury research In line with these focal differences between traditional luxury and unconventional luxury, the studies in this special issue illustrate how experiential luxury emerges in rather under-researched contexts that transcend (extra)ordinary consumer life (such as hospitals, palliative care). For example, Sudbury-Riley et al. (2020) investigate experiential luxury in life phases in which agency is transitioning; that is the end-oflife phase in palliative care. Based on narratives and pathographies provided by patients, families, and bereaved users (n = 140) of multiple hospices (n = 5) in the UK, the authors discuss notions of the sacred, profane and mundane and illustrate the ways in which those navigating a liminal space encounter unexpected yet astonishing luxury experiences. They pay special attention to the meanings attributed to the hospice as liminal space, cathedral, and community, which fertilize experiences of luxury in terms of being lived, personalized, integrated, familiar, transformational, hedonic, eudaimonic, and (dis)connected. Their research illustrates how unconventional luxury is empowering 3
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explorative phase that the field of unconventional luxury is in may have provided more inspiration to qualitative or conceptual research. In the field of luxury, available samples are often small as scarcity and exclusivity define many luxury contexts; this makes qualitative research, with its focus on in-depth studies of small samples, prevalent in luxury research. Having said that, with the contour of the path at hand, future research may further explore the themes outlined by means of multiple methods. Also, as tribute to the agentic nature of unconventional luxury, future research could explore how different agency is embedded in and triggered by different contexts. By this, we do not only mean spatial contexts but also contexts that differ in terms of emotional involvement and physical intensity. Another aspect we believe worthy of further exploration ties into the experiential and ephemeral nature of unconventional luxury. How can products, services, servicescapes, and workplaces be designed so as to allow for consumers and clients to experience those ephemeral moments of luxury that–however brief–are pregnant with significance? And along those lines, how can these moments contribute to–perhaps temporary–transformations that provide lasting value to our lives? Whatever the context, be it healthcare, dance halls, department stores, or the confines of our homes, these insights can eventually increase the extent and significance of luxuries for all.
consumption in the field of luxury by illustrating how luxury resellerbuyer relationships may be reconfigured from stigmatization to social acceptance, and in some cases even a higher perceived social status, on the backdrop of secondhand luxury platforms and a circular economy thinking. In keeping with this focus on consumer practices, Banister et al. (2020) take a practice approach to luxury and seek to understand how consumers themselves shape luxury meanings through everyday luxury practices. Based on in-depth interviews and observations the authors describe how individuals work creatively with mundane objects and routine activities that help them achieve status and self- transformation through caretaking and escaping practices. The findings highlight the potential for more subjective, personal and contestable understandings of luxury that is shaped by practice. This allows for a more inclusive approach to luxury as it is accessible to many through the creative mastery of own consumption practices, rather than through monetary means. Consequently, their research illustrates how the notion of scarcity is reframed in unconventional conceptualizations of luxury, as it is more an object of limited experiential availability than it is limited in scope of goods available. Accessibility is framed non-experientially but also of major concern in Cristini and Kauppinen-Räisänen’s (2020) conceptual article about the transformation of the global commons into luxuries for all. In opposition to most traditional conceptualizations of luxury, who describe luxury as being found beyond necessity (Sombart, 1922), they argue that luxuries are not automatically within a sphere beyond necessities. Quite the contrary can be the case, since today luxury may constitute basic access to the global commons and elementary resources of clean air, water, and food. These necessary resources are increasingly depleted and become inaccessible for some. Instead of bringing them to the market as luxuries for the few (e.g. glacial water or canned air), the authors criticize how mass industrialization and consumption have altered the Earth's ecosystem and they argue for the transformation of the global commons into luxuries for all. Finally, the article by von Wallpach et al. (2020) investigates the ‘experiential essence of luxury’ and consequently focuses on one of the three main aspects of unconventional luxury as outlined in Fig. 1. By means of qualitative in-depth interviews prompted by pictures of moments of luxury that interviewees brought to the interviews, the authors investigate the shared qualities of 196 moments of luxury. The authors identify five types of luxury moments: interrupting, climactic, disrupting, ritualistic, and terminating, which differ in their temporal focus (past, present or future oriented) and degree to which they are in experiential contrast with ordinary life. In essence, however brief, moments of luxury are experienced as being freeing, happy, perfect, scarce, caring, and exciting and these qualities constitute the experiential contrast that sets luxury apart from other merely pleasurable moments. The authors conclude with the optimistic notion that luxury is for all and not much different from the fresh scent of a rose inhaled after a long winter.
Acknowledgements The editors thank the reviewers involved in the development of all articles in this special issue. Echoing feedback from the authors of the papers, the reviewers’ insightful and constructive criticism has truly been invaluable in unleashing the full potential and contributions of the papers. We would also like to thank the authors for their diligence and perseverance in the review process to the benefit of our joint quest to unravel the phenomenon of unconventional luxury. References Appadurai, A. (Ed.) (1988). The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge University Press. Arnould, E. J., & Price, L. L. (1993). River magic: Extraordinary experience and the extended service encounter. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(1), 24–45. Babin, B. J., Darden, W. R., & Griffin, M. (1994). Work and/or fun: Measuring hedonic and utilitarian shopping value. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(4), 644–656. Banister, E., Roper, S., & Potavanich, T. (2020). Consumers’ practices of everyday luxury. Journal of Business Research. Bardhi, F., & Eckhardt, G. E. (2017). Liquid consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(3), 582–597. Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168. Berry, C. J. (1994). The idea of luxury: A conceptual and historical investigation, Vol. 30. Cambridge University Press. Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Tetreault, M. S. (1990). The service encounter: Diagnosing favorable and unfavorable incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54(1), 71–84. Canniford, R., & Shankar, A. (2013). Purifying practices: How consumers assemble romantic experiences of nature. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(5), 1051–1069. Cristini, H., & Kauppinen-Räisänen, H. (2020). Managing the transformation of the global commons into luxuries for all. Journal of Business Research. Cristini, H., Kauppinen-Räisänen, H., Barthod-Prothade, M., & Woodside, A. (2017). Toward a general theory of luxury: Advancing from workbench definitions and theoretical transformations. Journal of Business Research, 70, 101–107. Danziger, P. (2005). Let them eat cake: Marketing luxury to the masses—as well as the classes. Chicago: Dearborn Trade. Eckhardt, G. M., Belk, R. W., & Wilson, J. A. (2015). The rise of inconspicuous consumption. Journal of Marketing Management, 31(7–8), 807–826. Fishbein, M. (1963). An investigation of the relationships between beliefs about an object and the attitude toward that object. Human Relations, 16(August), 233–240. Forbes (2019). 3 Ways Millennials And Gen-Z Consumers Are Radically Transforming The Luxury Market. Grönroos, C. (1978). A service-orientated approach to marketing of services. European Journal of Marketing, 12(8), 588–601. Grönroos, C. (1984). A service quality model and its marketing implications. European Journal of Marketing, 18(4), 36–44. Grönroos, C., & Voima, P. (2013). Critical service logic: Making sense of value creation and co-creation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing science, 41(2), 133–150. Grönroos, C. (2008). Service logic revisited: Who creates value? And who co-creates? European Business Review, 20(4), 298–314.
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Thyra Uth Thomsena, Jonas Holmqvistb, , Sylvia von Wallpacha, Andrea Hemetsbergerc, Russel W. Belkd a Copenhagen Business School, Department of Marketing, Solbjerg Plads 3C, 3rd Floor, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark b Kedge Business School, Department of Marketing, 680 cours de la Libération, 33400 Talence, France c University of Innsbruck School of Management, Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism, Universitätsstr. 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria d Schulich School of Business, 111 Ian Macdonald Boulevard Toronto, ON, Canada E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (T.U. Thomsen), [email protected] (J. Holmqvist), [email protected] (A. Hemetsberger), [email protected] (R.W. Belk).
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Corresponding author.
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Conceptualizing unconventional luxury A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Luxury Unconventional luxury Luxury experiences Luxury consumption
How is luxury conceived in a modern and changing world? While luxury is a well-researched area in the domain of consumer goods, research on more consumer-focused forms of luxury is still nascent. Yet today luxury experiences drive the development of luxury markets and inconspicuous, private consumption of luxury is rising. In order to address these developments, this special issue moves beyond conventional understandings of luxury as involving conspicuous status consumption of tangible goods, and focuses instead on how consumers may experience, give, produce, or share luxury, and what luxuriousness implies. The various articles in the special issue addresses topics such as intangible services, hedonic escapes, and everyday pleasures. They also include alternative understandings of exclusivity, and of common goods that have become scarce over time. Together, the articles in the special issue combine to present a broader understanding both of what luxury can be and of what luxury might do for consumers. While previous conventional luxury understanding focus on exclusive status consumption, the different articles in this special issue instead introduce consumer perceptions of luxury for which conventional luxury attributes look markedly or even entirely different.
1. Introduction The world of luxury is undergoing profound changes. Luxury research has long been seen as a traditional field focused on a segment of exclusive consumers and products, only available in a few select locations (Kapferer & Bastien, 2009), later extended to masstige products and a more democratized view of luxury (Danziger, 2005), Lipovetsky and Roux (2003) suggested a more intangible and subjective view of luxury. Changes in society and the rapid development of technology have profoundly altered contemporary consumption styles. According to Forbes (2019), Millennials and younger customers made up one third of all luxury customers in 2019, and this figure is expected to breach 50% by 2024. As the typical luxury consumer shifts from a traditional wealthy customer who buys luxury in a few select stores (Kapferer & Bastien, 2009) to a younger, connected and global consumer, we propose a broadened understanding of luxury that is keeping track with (post)postmodern times of experiential economy (e.g. Pine & Gilmore, 1998), liquid consumption (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2017), social media, digitalization and IoT (e.g. Hoffman & Novak, 2018), consumer deceleration (Husemann & Eckhardt, 2019), sustainability (Lubin & Esty, 2010) and climate change. Such disruptive changes make definitions of luxury inevitably unstable and subject to change over time (Cristini, Kauppinen-Räisänen, Barthod-Prothade, & Woodside, 2017). We further argue that the prevailing reliance on a product-focus to understand luxury consumption is increasingly at odds with the larger field of marketing. Already in the 1970s, market researchers started arguing for a service understanding that reflected a shift from relying only on product features (e.g. Grönroos, 1978; Langeard & Eiglier, 1975; Shostack, 1977). This shift gained traction in the 1980s and 1990s, moving marketing away from just a conventional product-focus (e.g. Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990; Grönroos, 1984; Parasuraman, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.01.058
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Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985). In the last decade, the focus has shifted even more decisively to consumer processes, rather than products, as the basis for value-in-use (Grönroos & Voima, 2013; Lusch, Vargo, & O’Brien, 2007; Vargo & Lusch, 2004), and a recognition of how technological advances result in changes in how consumers interact with companies (Larivière et al., 2017; Wirtz et al., 2018). A similar shift can be found in consumer research. While early research tended to focus on how consumers react to product attributes (e.g. Fishbein, 1963) the last forty years of consumer research have witnessed the development of a rich literature on experiential consumption (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982), ranging from the mundane (Babin, Darden, & Griffin, 1994) to the exceptional (Arnould & Price, 1993). Common to this research is a focus on consumer identity and self (e.g. Belk, 1988), emotions (e.g. Canniford & Shankar, 2013), activities and experiences (e.g. Woermann & Rokka, 2015). The last two decades have also seen a decisive shift to recognizing the consumer as a value creator (Grönroos & Voima, 2013; Vargo & Lusch, 2004), that value-inuse emerges in the customers’ processes rather than being produced by the firm (Grönroos, 2008), and that customers ultimately decide on whether an offering carries any value (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). As this overview of the last decades of marketing and consumer research shows, there has been an increased focus on the role(s) of customers, customers’ emotions and experiences, and the importance of services, which could cross-fertilize future luxury research in moving beyond its main focus on products (Ko, Costello, & Taylor, 2019). Han, Nunes, and Dreze (2010) point out that the very idea of luxury is that it represents something more than just the product quality, which is also why it sells at a higher price than just the functional price. If luxury were really about product features, then the price would reflect the functional price and scarcity of the product, which is not the case (Han et al., 2010; Kapferer & Bastien, 2009). Instead, luxury is to a large
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Fig. 1. Differences in conceptualizations of luxury.
(Hemetsberger, von Wallpach, & Bauer, 2012), inconspicuous luxury (Eckhardt, Belk, & Wilson, 2015; Walters & Carr, 2019), hyper-personalized luxury goods (Rosenbaum, Ramirez, Campbell, & Klaus, 2019), or the luxury of giving (instead of having) and related processes of selfand other-transformation (Llamas & Thomsen, 2016). Despite these attempts at grasping luxury in a different way than traditional luxury research has done, and in order to pay tribute to the fact that whatever could be in the research gap was yet to be unearthed and named, we - the editors of this special issue - decided to call for research about ‘unconventional luxury’. With all contributions to the special issue in place, it is now time to identify what unconventional luxury (research) is all about. To this end, in the following section we discuss the different focal aspects of traditional versus unconventional luxury conceptualizations which have emerged when the articles in this special issue unraveled the concept of unconventional luxury. While traditional conceptualizations of luxury have focused more on luxury in terms of being ontologically scarce, product-focused and receptive, we find instead that research on unconventional conceptualizations of luxury focuses more on luxury in terms of being epistemologically scarce, experiential and agentic. It is important to note that we do not intend to outline a comprehensive typology, but rather some conceptually contrasting paths along which traditional and unconventional notions of luxury typically differs. These paths and focal aspects of different conceptualizations of luxury are illustrated in Fig. 1 and further elaborated in the following sections. From product focused to experiential: Traditional luxury research focuses on luxury as defined by product features that serve needs beyond what is necessary (Sombart, 1922). Unfortunately, today even clean water, air and food may be luxuries for different times, places, and peoples (Cristini and Kauppinen-Räisänen, 2020). As illustrated in Fig. 1, traditional understandings of luxury focus on high-quality products selling at a high price and giving the owner prestige based on their public or shared symbolism (Ko et al., 2019). This is also evidenced by Han et al. (2010, p. 16), who state that “Luxury goods are traditionally defined as goods such that the mere use or display of a particular branded product brings the owner prestige apart from any functional utility”. In contrast to these traditional product-focused views, the articles in this special issue introduce unconventional conceptualizations of luxury with a focus on how luxury is experienced (e.g. Kreuzer, Cado, & Raïes, 2020; von Wallpach, Hemetsberger, Thomsen, and Belk (2020). Instead of focusing on shared public meanings linked to a conspicuously consumed product or brand, unconventional luxury focuses on fleeting private meanings attached to an ephemeral experience of luxury in however brief moments. So from an unconventional perspective on luxury, luxury is an idiosyncratic experience and rests in the eyes of the beholder, instead of serving as a
extent a social construct with perceived benefits beyond the product quality (Kapferer, 2010; Roper, Caruana, Medway, & Murphy, 2013), and changes with societal developments. Hence we identify a research gap that addresses luxury as a social construct, the value of which depends on consumer perceptions and how they construct luxury in times of climate change, technological and societal disruptions. Building on this situation, we argue that a more comprehensive understanding of luxury might be fruitful to reflect the rapid developments in society and technology, in line with calls for researchers to understand marketing horizontally rather than to resort to “academic silos” (Holmqvist & Diaz Ruiz, 2017, p. 801). As early as 1977, Shostack published a seminal article in Journal of Marketing called “Breaking free from product-marketing” (Shostack, 1977). More than 40 years later, we argue that it is high time for luxury marketing to follow suit. In paraphrasing Shostack’s call, we do not aim to replace current definitions of luxury, but rather to enrich our understanding with a contemporary view that adds an experiential, fluid and ephemeral view of luxuriousness to current sociomaterial notions of traditional and masstige luxury. To accomplish this task, this special issue moves beyond the classical idea of luxury as consumption of conspicuous products and brands, and includes a focus on how consumers experience, give, produce, or share - rather than own and display – luxury. This focus includes intangible services and everyday pleasures; activities and moments; and even common goods that have become scarce. The combined contribution of the articles in this special issue consists of a broader understanding of what luxury can be, as well as of what luxury can do for consumers. Below, we first discuss how three focal aspects of conceptualizations of luxury differ in traditional vs. unconventional perspectives on luxury. We next outline each of the articles in this special issue on unconventional luxury and detail how they contribute to advancing new insights into the concept. 1.1. Luxury revisited Notions of luxury have been constructed differently in different contexts showing the dynamic nature of this construct, always in motion (Kapferer, 2008; Mortelmans, 2005). Lately, new and unconventional notions of luxury are emerging to shift the focus from “having-tobeing and from owning-to-experiencing” (Cristini et al., 2017, p. 101) and although empirical investigations of unconventional luxury are still scarce, a few studies have emerged since Lipovetsky and Roux (2003) first suggested that the concept of luxury should evolve into an intangible and subjective understanding. These studies investigate the link between luxury experiences and states or processes of self 2
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even consumers with limited (physical) agency and how it enriches their lives in difficult and liminal phases. Yet another context quite different from consumers’ experiences of luxury in everyday life, is the hospital environment within which Kreuzer et al. (2020) investigate luxury as moments of care. Based on 30 phenomenological interviews with patients of a luxury ophthalmic clinic they illustrate how interpersonal interactions contribute to luxury experiences of healthcare consumers. Luxury experienced as moments of care emerges in short-lived and prosocial interpersonal interactions between healthcare consumers and medical staff through authentic presence, balanced power relationships, and interpersonal synchrony. Thus, the authors conclude that ‘true’ luxury resides in the experience of humanity in interpersonal interactions, which surpasses the material luxury traditionally investigated in luxury research. The study suggests the establishment of a ‘culture of care’, which can prove useful for health-care managers, their personnel, and patients, and at the same time for managers and customers in other service environments. Furthermore, several studies of this special issue focus on the agentic aspect of luxury and illustrate how experiential luxury through relatively under-researched practices (such as salsa dancing, social media lurking, or re-decorating). For example, Leban et al. (2020) contribute to our understanding of unconventional luxury through investigating the transformational effects of consumers’ social media lurking practices on luxury consumption. Since contemporary luxury brands (as well as non-luxury brands) extensively use social media channels as marketing tools, understanding how consumers engage with luxury brands online is becoming increasingly important. Based on sixteen qualitative interviews with luxury brand Instagram followers who have not, or only rarely consumed luxuries, the authors identify how practices of lurking transform luxury consumption. The article identifies four luxury brand lurking practices on social media: compassing, curating, collecting, and conversing. These lurking practices have a transformational effect on luxury consumption through dematerialization (i.e. physical material properties of luxury brands become secondary to their virtual representations) as well as through re-materialization (i.e. real-world objects and activities are imbued with digital properties unavailable in the physical world). Another example of an agentic approach to luxury is presented by Holmqvist et al. (2020) who contribute to the special issue by analyzing how hedonic escapism can facilitate luxury experiences. Based on a three-year ethnographic study within the sphere of salsa dancing, they theorize the concept of “moments of luxury” as a brief and temporary hedonic escape from the worries of everyday life. Contrasting the prevailing individual focus in the luxury literature, the authors describe the moment of luxury as a collectively based, consumer-driven experience. The study agrees with previous findings that exclusivity is key to luxury, but extends this understanding by identifying an alternative form of exclusivity, in the form of exclusivity-by-practice instead of the more conventional exclusivity-by-price. Focusing on the consumer experience, the findings unravel an unconventional form of luxury that combines aspects of more traditional luxury such as the aesthetic dresses and movement and the authentic heritage, with the more unconventional exclusivity-by-practice in achieving temporally brief, hedonic escapes from everyday life. In another look at unconventional luxury practices, Turunen et al. (2020) recognize that consumers are taking on new roles in luxury, and can be sellers as well as consumers. To advance this understanding of the consumer roles, they investigate the act of selling rather than consuming luxury goods and its effects on empowerment and enactment of social roles. Based on eighteen qualitative interviews with sellers of second-hand luxury, the authors examine the meanings and values attached to the process of selling luxury goods. The results show that the act of reselling luxury goods might alter the symbolic value of the item and of the self (i.e. detachment from past symbolic meaning, divestment from emotional value, gaining financial empowerment). Further, the authors extend the understanding of second-hand
way for the masses (Han et al., 2010) or members of the upper class (Kastanakis & Balabanis, 2012; Okonkwo, 2009; Truong, Simmons, McColl, & Kitchen, 2008) to demonstrate their prestige, wealth, power, or status. From ontological scarcity to epistemological scarcity: In traditional conceptualizations, luxury is often presented as being a limited resource, while in unconventional conceptualizations we posit that luxury may be presented as being only restricted by the perceptual abilities of the consumer. Consequently, in traditional conceptualization of luxury, there is a focus on ontological scarcity in terms of luxury being expensive, (individually) owned, and accessible to only to the few (Kapferer & Bastien, 2009). As early luxury research by Berry (1994, p. 41) states “a luxury good is a widely desired (because not yet widely attained) good that is believed to be ‘pleasing’”. On the other hand, what we label epistemological scarcity focuses instead on the rareness of the luxury encounter, which in principle is accessible to many as long as they are mindful of it, as it can be found in the most unexpected contexts and triggered inexpensively (e.g. Banister, Roper, & Potavanich, 2020; Holmqvist, Diaz Ruiz, & Peñaloza, 2020; Kreuzer et al., 2020; von Wallpach et al., 2020). Here, in order for luxury to emerge, it is more important that the luxury ‘object’ is possessed, i.e. internalized and selfrelevant (Belk, 1988), than that it is owned or precious to others than the consumer who experiences it. From receptive to agentic: Last but not least, traditional conceptualizations of luxury position the consumer as being receptive to luxury, while unconventional conceptualizations of luxury promote the agentic notion of luxury experiences (e.g. Banister et al., 2020; Holmqvist et al., 2020; Leban, Seo, & Voyer, 2020; Turunen, Cervellon, & Carey, 2020). Along these lines, research by Appadurai (1988, p. 38) offered a definition of luxury goods emphasizing their role as social markers, asserting that their “principal use is rhetorical and social, goods that are simply incarnated signs”. Consequently, the receiver of such signs is equipped with a symbolically charged good, which constitutes luxury that does not require any agency in order to be considered luxury. Instead of acquiring existing luxury products and brands that are symbolically charged through for example marketing maneuvers, unconventional luxury focuses on performed, constructed, enacted meanings of luxury experiences. While we termed this focus of unconventional luxury ‘agentic’, it is important to note that agency does not require the consumers to be overly resourceful in terms of physical or monetary means. As Sudbury-Riley, Hunter-Jones, Al-Abdin, Lewin, and Spence (2020) show, even individuals with very limited physical capacity – in their case those in hospice care – can experience and cherish luxury that is stripped of any product or status focus. Consequently, from an unconventional luxury perspective, consumers are empowered to influence where, how and how often their lives are enriched by experiences of luxury. 2. Advancing unconventional luxury research In line with these focal differences between traditional luxury and unconventional luxury, the studies in this special issue illustrate how experiential luxury emerges in rather under-researched contexts that transcend (extra)ordinary consumer life (such as hospitals, palliative care). For example, Sudbury-Riley et al. (2020) investigate experiential luxury in life phases in which agency is transitioning; that is the end-oflife phase in palliative care. Based on narratives and pathographies provided by patients, families, and bereaved users (n = 140) of multiple hospices (n = 5) in the UK, the authors discuss notions of the sacred, profane and mundane and illustrate the ways in which those navigating a liminal space encounter unexpected yet astonishing luxury experiences. They pay special attention to the meanings attributed to the hospice as liminal space, cathedral, and community, which fertilize experiences of luxury in terms of being lived, personalized, integrated, familiar, transformational, hedonic, eudaimonic, and (dis)connected. Their research illustrates how unconventional luxury is empowering 3
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explorative phase that the field of unconventional luxury is in may have provided more inspiration to qualitative or conceptual research. In the field of luxury, available samples are often small as scarcity and exclusivity define many luxury contexts; this makes qualitative research, with its focus on in-depth studies of small samples, prevalent in luxury research. Having said that, with the contour of the path at hand, future research may further explore the themes outlined by means of multiple methods. Also, as tribute to the agentic nature of unconventional luxury, future research could explore how different agency is embedded in and triggered by different contexts. By this, we do not only mean spatial contexts but also contexts that differ in terms of emotional involvement and physical intensity. Another aspect we believe worthy of further exploration ties into the experiential and ephemeral nature of unconventional luxury. How can products, services, servicescapes, and workplaces be designed so as to allow for consumers and clients to experience those ephemeral moments of luxury that–however brief–are pregnant with significance? And along those lines, how can these moments contribute to–perhaps temporary–transformations that provide lasting value to our lives? Whatever the context, be it healthcare, dance halls, department stores, or the confines of our homes, these insights can eventually increase the extent and significance of luxuries for all.
consumption in the field of luxury by illustrating how luxury resellerbuyer relationships may be reconfigured from stigmatization to social acceptance, and in some cases even a higher perceived social status, on the backdrop of secondhand luxury platforms and a circular economy thinking. In keeping with this focus on consumer practices, Banister et al. (2020) take a practice approach to luxury and seek to understand how consumers themselves shape luxury meanings through everyday luxury practices. Based on in-depth interviews and observations the authors describe how individuals work creatively with mundane objects and routine activities that help them achieve status and self- transformation through caretaking and escaping practices. The findings highlight the potential for more subjective, personal and contestable understandings of luxury that is shaped by practice. This allows for a more inclusive approach to luxury as it is accessible to many through the creative mastery of own consumption practices, rather than through monetary means. Consequently, their research illustrates how the notion of scarcity is reframed in unconventional conceptualizations of luxury, as it is more an object of limited experiential availability than it is limited in scope of goods available. Accessibility is framed non-experientially but also of major concern in Cristini and Kauppinen-Räisänen’s (2020) conceptual article about the transformation of the global commons into luxuries for all. In opposition to most traditional conceptualizations of luxury, who describe luxury as being found beyond necessity (Sombart, 1922), they argue that luxuries are not automatically within a sphere beyond necessities. Quite the contrary can be the case, since today luxury may constitute basic access to the global commons and elementary resources of clean air, water, and food. These necessary resources are increasingly depleted and become inaccessible for some. Instead of bringing them to the market as luxuries for the few (e.g. glacial water or canned air), the authors criticize how mass industrialization and consumption have altered the Earth's ecosystem and they argue for the transformation of the global commons into luxuries for all. Finally, the article by von Wallpach et al. (2020) investigates the ‘experiential essence of luxury’ and consequently focuses on one of the three main aspects of unconventional luxury as outlined in Fig. 1. By means of qualitative in-depth interviews prompted by pictures of moments of luxury that interviewees brought to the interviews, the authors investigate the shared qualities of 196 moments of luxury. The authors identify five types of luxury moments: interrupting, climactic, disrupting, ritualistic, and terminating, which differ in their temporal focus (past, present or future oriented) and degree to which they are in experiential contrast with ordinary life. In essence, however brief, moments of luxury are experienced as being freeing, happy, perfect, scarce, caring, and exciting and these qualities constitute the experiential contrast that sets luxury apart from other merely pleasurable moments. The authors conclude with the optimistic notion that luxury is for all and not much different from the fresh scent of a rose inhaled after a long winter.
Acknowledgements The editors thank the reviewers involved in the development of all articles in this special issue. Echoing feedback from the authors of the papers, the reviewers’ insightful and constructive criticism has truly been invaluable in unleashing the full potential and contributions of the papers. We would also like to thank the authors for their diligence and perseverance in the review process to the benefit of our joint quest to unravel the phenomenon of unconventional luxury. References Appadurai, A. (Ed.) (1988). The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge University Press. Arnould, E. J., & Price, L. L. (1993). River magic: Extraordinary experience and the extended service encounter. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(1), 24–45. Babin, B. J., Darden, W. R., & Griffin, M. (1994). Work and/or fun: Measuring hedonic and utilitarian shopping value. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(4), 644–656. Banister, E., Roper, S., & Potavanich, T. (2020). Consumers’ practices of everyday luxury. Journal of Business Research. Bardhi, F., & Eckhardt, G. E. (2017). Liquid consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(3), 582–597. Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168. Berry, C. J. (1994). The idea of luxury: A conceptual and historical investigation, Vol. 30. Cambridge University Press. Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Tetreault, M. S. (1990). The service encounter: Diagnosing favorable and unfavorable incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54(1), 71–84. Canniford, R., & Shankar, A. (2013). Purifying practices: How consumers assemble romantic experiences of nature. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(5), 1051–1069. Cristini, H., & Kauppinen-Räisänen, H. (2020). Managing the transformation of the global commons into luxuries for all. Journal of Business Research. Cristini, H., Kauppinen-Räisänen, H., Barthod-Prothade, M., & Woodside, A. (2017). Toward a general theory of luxury: Advancing from workbench definitions and theoretical transformations. Journal of Business Research, 70, 101–107. Danziger, P. (2005). Let them eat cake: Marketing luxury to the masses—as well as the classes. Chicago: Dearborn Trade. Eckhardt, G. M., Belk, R. W., & Wilson, J. A. (2015). The rise of inconspicuous consumption. Journal of Marketing Management, 31(7–8), 807–826. Fishbein, M. (1963). An investigation of the relationships between beliefs about an object and the attitude toward that object. Human Relations, 16(August), 233–240. Forbes (2019). 3 Ways Millennials And Gen-Z Consumers Are Radically Transforming The Luxury Market. Grönroos, C. (1978). A service-orientated approach to marketing of services. European Journal of Marketing, 12(8), 588–601. Grönroos, C. (1984). A service quality model and its marketing implications. European Journal of Marketing, 18(4), 36–44. Grönroos, C., & Voima, P. (2013). Critical service logic: Making sense of value creation and co-creation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing science, 41(2), 133–150. Grönroos, C. (2008). Service logic revisited: Who creates value? And who co-creates? European Business Review, 20(4), 298–314.
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Thyra Uth Thomsena, Jonas Holmqvistb, , Sylvia von Wallpacha, Andrea Hemetsbergerc, Russel W. Belkd a Copenhagen Business School, Department of Marketing, Solbjerg Plads 3C, 3rd Floor, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark b Kedge Business School, Department of Marketing, 680 cours de la Libération, 33400 Talence, France c University of Innsbruck School of Management, Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism, Universitätsstr. 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria d Schulich School of Business, 111 Ian Macdonald Boulevard Toronto, ON, Canada E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (T.U. Thomsen), [email protected] (J. Holmqvist), [email protected] (A. Hemetsberger), [email protected] (R.W. Belk).
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Corresponding author.