In today's markets, numerous brands use strong brand origin cues in their promotions campaigns. This is highly prevalent regarding luxury brands including behemoths like LVMH and Gucci to specialist luxury players like Patek Phillipe and Bremont, which highlight their brand origin in most promotion. For example, specialist luxury watch maker Baume & Mercier highlights its brand origin within their logo itself. Researchers suggest that in markets such as luxury fashions and accessories, a specific country of origin or foreign image generally speaking may carry a prestige connotation. It has also been observed that luxury brands spend a disproportionate level of their overall resources on brand image building.
When viewing the country-of-origin literature, it's possible to see that most of the country-of- origin literature has emphasized origin effects at the product level rather than brand level. Professor Keller opines that brand related cues act as a crucial competitive advantage aspect for luxury brands. Moreover, scientific study has progressively called for measuring the effect of name origin and brand image on purchase intentions. In one of my earlier papers, I found that because of the highly social nature of luxury consumption, consumers attempt to gain social advantage by using the desired group's consumption pattern. Emphasizing different issues with the independent self, it can be theorized that consumers will demonstrate fitting in behaviour by utilizing brands which match the look from the group they wish to participate in. Furthermore, researchers have emphasized that brand related cues may provide a key to an improved understanding of luxury consumption. Thus, if consumers use branding cues to create a sense of belonging, it would seem logical to review how such branding cues is going to influence consumer purchase decision.
In recent years, the matter of luxury consumption has brought a great deal of interest among marketing scholars. However, little is well known about how to optimise and organize consumer expectations using management controlled factors for example brand origin and brand image.
To locate a remedy towards the issue of how management controlled factors may be used to optimize consumer expectations, we carried out a report emphasizing following two questions:
1.What is the impact of branding cues (i.e. brand origin and brand image) on purchase intentions?
2.Is the impact similar throughout developing and emerging markets?
The solution to the question one will help researchers and managers in knowing perhaps the massive amount money luxury brands invest in brand image is worth it or otherwise not. Similarly, the reply to question two highlights what type of standardization and adaptation is required when promoting luxury brands in various markets.
With this particular goal in mind, we studied consumers from your UK and India employing a structured quantitative survey.
Prior research emphasizing regularly consumed products have discovered a greater influence of name origin on collectivist consumers. However, contradicting outcome was noticed in the context of luxury purchase intentions. The analysis results declare that consumers in individualist developed market depend more on brand origin cues than consumers in collectivist, developing markets. This can be attributed to the type of the market and competition. British consumers have come across the operation of globalization for an extended period than their Indian counterparts. Even though the elite in the Indian market were as aware and consuming global luxury brands as their developed country counterparts, the masses weren't. Furthermore, global luxury brands entered several developing markets including India in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For instance, LVMH entered India through a jv in 2003, and Armani arrived in India only in mid-2007. The longer exposure with the masses to global luxury products, availability of more brands, and greater competition make British consumers increasingly aware of the brand origin cues associated with the luxury products or brands. Therefore, to differentiate themselves, British consumers use stronger brand origin cues than Indian consumers who only recently have come across global luxury brands in their home markets.
The finding concerning brand image is worthy of attention. The research findings says brand image does not influence consumer purchase intentions directly however it significantly moderates the partnership between normative interpersonal influences and luxury purchase intentions both in countries. This finding gives empirical support for the theorized argument submitted earlier regarding fitting in behaviour and also the influence of brand name image. The study shows that people demonstrate higher self-brand connection when the brand image is similar to the image of the social group they need to keep company with. Brand image seemed to be found to be a disciplined moderator for that relationship between informational interpersonal influences and luxury purchase intentions. However, this is only significant in the context of the UK. This finding corroborates the earlier result regarding the usage of strong brand cues on the list of British consumers. It once more highlights the significance of brand building.
Managers vying for acceptance of these luxury brands in developed markets just like the UK should focus on developing a advertising campaign that highlights the brand origin prominently. The findings highlight the fascinating contrasts in buyer behavior across nations. Indian consumers are highly dedicated to social acceptability to see others views of reality to fit in. Alternatively, British consumers keep company with a favourable brand origin to fit in. Luxury brand managers need to be aware of consumers' limited awareness and comprehension of luxury brands in developing markets (due to less exposure). Consequently, it may be essential to go for significant co-branding and joint ventures such markets to attain a greater prominence of the brands in consumers' minds which in turn will build strong loyalty and equity in these markets.
Overall, the results also highlight an original contextual association of luxury. Previous researchers observed the significance of brand origin and image regarding Indian consumers' consumption decisions for regularly purchase products however, contradicting findings of this study suggest that luxury like a context is fairly unique. Therefore, managers should approach generalized findings relating to regularly purchased products with caution when contemplating it in the context of luxury consumption.
Reference:
Is marketing money spent on luxury brand origin and image worth it?
