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decade. These new consumption patterns are attributed to the appearance of the “new rich” who, as a market, hold tremendous potential for luxury companies. The
transformation of wealth from the traditional old rich families of
entrepreneurs and real estate owners, to the newly affluent young business
professionals, IT-entrepreneurs and retirement rich happened within the last 15
years, during and after the economic bubble of the 1980s.
As their major share of profit now comes from a much more diversified consumer,
many premium companies that used to sell to a conservative, elitist, and
upper-class group of luxury customers now face the challenge of how to satisfy
the new demand for mass luxury while at the same time taking care not to
devaluate the brand and lose their more upscale clients. I will argue that
because of these developments, premium companies have to change their
relationship with their most valuable customers: from an impersonal to one that
will create the opportunity for long-term cooperation and trust. New ways to
transmit an image of exclusivity are needed to keep the aspirational appeal of
brands and products. The affluent consumers have become increasingly immune to
the normal channels of mass marketing and now demand real communication and
added value. In order to reach them, luxury companies have to get access to the
most exclusive of all marketing environments: personal communication between
consumers about luxury brands (word of mouth).
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The defining attribute of services for rich people in Japan has been the face to
face interaction in exclusive shops not meant for the normal middle class
consumer. Before the economic bubble in the 1980s, luxury companies were
defining their customers predominantly by income level. Their numbers were
therefore fixed to a small elite and business could not be expanded beyond this
scope without the danger of losing exclusivity. With the commodification of
luxury and rising mass affluence, a change in the perception of the term
occurred
1. In recent years the long taken-for-granted distinction between domestic and
foreign brands is blurring and there is a greater tolerance for nontraditional
lifestyle paths2. Luxury consumers are turning into unpredictable shoppers that combine different brands and styles to form distinctive and
personal lifestyles, and in response to that the variations between offerings
are becoming ever more subtle3. A new demand for authenticity, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and an
increasing translation of culture and arts into consumer products indicate a
shift away from simple conspicuous consumption towards informed consumption4.
Global Insight predicts that premium brands will grow 89.3% in Japan between
2005 and 2010, while volume brands will only grow 0.9% in the same period5. How can such an expansion in the luxury market be explained? Takahashi (2005)
notes that if we take a look at the statistics of high taxpayers in Japan the
market of rich people is expanding, but not in a way that would justify the
rise in luxury sales that was experienced in the last
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1 Takahashi 2005: 10, 2 Nikkei Weekly, July 16th, 2007, Debbie Howard, Japan's evolving consumer psyche
creating opportunities, p. 32; Hirano and Miles 2006 3 SIGMA 2005: 10; see also Ishiwata 2006: 7; Nunes et al. 2004: 57, 4 Currid 2007: 36; see also Scott 2000; Anterior Insight 2008; Nikkei Weekly,
October 15th, 2007: 26,
5 Treece 2006). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||