In some of my earlier posts, I have stated that there are two simultaneous paradoxical needs among us consumers with regard to consumption namely, (a) to conform and (b) to demonstrate uniqueness. In sociology and psychology this has led to creation of various terms such as fitting in or standing out, in-group vs. out-group behaviour, [...]
While listening and later on reading Apple’s defence of the ‘Antennagate’, I felt how much strategic thinking has gone into this and how the debate was PR driven rather than having any talk of substance. Apple won praise of customers and non-customers alike because it stayed at the upper spectrum debate previously. It looked at [...]
Most consumers in developed and emerging markets are now facing an interesting choice making dilemma. It’s the dilemma of plenitude. This relates to most purchase decisions which includes a wide spectrum of products and services from buying corn flakes (a fairly low ticket item) to a car (a fairly big ticket item) and even the [...]
It has been well-established in psychology literature that consumers are highly irrational in most of their decision making. Moreover, Daniel Kahneman (the Noble laureate) and Amos Tversky (who would have also won it if he didn’t die in 1996) have shown using various experiments throughout their research career that we as consumers are very poor [...]
When joining the ‘luxury society’ group, one of the interesting questions they asked was to provide your own definition of luxury. My response to that was “luxury is a state of mind. It is about how you carry yourself and fulfil yours as well as others desires”. My idea focused on the issue of luxury [...]
In this post, I want to focus on how a completely new and highly strategic internet marketing revenue model has been created by the brains behind Indian Premier League (IPL). Image via Wikipedia Most of the readers of this website I believe are aware what is cricket? It is a game of umpteen nuances and [...]
Recently, I was re-reading the book ‘luxury brand management’ wherein the authors – Chevalier and Mazzalovo – suggest three criteria to classify a luxury item: (a) strong artistic content; (b) unique craftsmanship and (c) international reputation. While I agree that the artistic content and craftsmanship is what differentiates most luxury product and brands from non-luxury, [...]
Analysts world over have been writing about luxury consumption among the Chinese consumers. Few have also discussed the issues of Chinese luxury brands aimed at global consumers including ‘Shanghai Tang’ and ‘LaVie’. However, there is little discussion on how slowly but steadily Chinese entrepreneurs are acquiring or taking over Western luxury brands. This post is [...]
In my earlier post ‘Status (luxury) consumption among British and Indian customers’, I discussed the theoretical implications relating to one of my recently published study in the International Marketing Review. In this post, I am going to focus on the managerial implications. Image by minxlj via Flickr To briefly summarise the study, it focused on [...]
Recently one of my research papers got published in the ‘International Marketing Review’. It focused on comparing the status consumption tendencies of British and Indian consumers. In this post, I shall focus on the findings of this study. Firstly, let me define what status consumption is and how it affects our behaviour? Researchers define status [...]