WHICH CONSUMER ARE YOU? (Media & Business; Consumer; Luxury Goods)
WHICH CONSUMER ARE YOU?
Reported in the Wall Street Journal, research by two professors and Young Jee Han (a doctoral student in Marketing at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California) has broken the luxury market into four strata of rich consumers – see below. The team’s study of luxury goods and their brand prominence aimed to define the different types of luxury goods consumers, their preferences and motivations.
- Patricians. High in financial means, Patricians are “principally concerned with associating with other patricians rather than dissociating themselves from other classes of consumers. They use subtle signals because only other patricians can interpret them.” They pay a premium for understatement.
- Parvenus. “Parvenus are affluent—it is not that they cannot afford quieter goods—but they crave status. They are concerned first and foremost with separating or dissociating themselves from the have-nots while associating themselves with other haves, both patricians and other parvenus.” Parvenus love the Louis Vuitton logo, the researchers say.
- Poseurs. Like Parvenus, Poseurs are “highly motivated to consume for the sake of status.” Poseurs “do not possess the financial means to readily afford authentic luxury goods. Yet they want to associate themselves with those they observe and recognize as having the financial means (the parvenus) and dissociate themselves from other less affluent people.” Poseurs like counterfeit luxury goods.
- Proletarians. These are less affluent consumers who also are less status conscious. “Proletarians are not driven to consume for the sake of status and either cannot or will not concern themselves with signaling by using status goods. They seek neither to associate with the upper crust nor to dissociate themselves from others of similarly humble means.” They tend to avoid luxury goods altogether.
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