Motivation for luxury consumption and critical success factors for luxury companies. A case study of entrance in a new country market with fashion luxury accessories

The thesis is aiming at investigating the concept of luxury deeply, the motivations for luxury consumption both from the point of view of academic literature and of the real market tendencies and features, it is also aiming at identifying possible critical success factors and rules to follow for the companies which want to succeed in the turbulent economic environment with their luxury offer or which want to make their goods or services to be identified as luxury and prestige. Moreover in terms of pragmatic implication there was developed a model of entering a new country market with luxury offer and it was applied to the case study of the company producing luxury accessories. This practical part of the study shows the building of distribution strategies as one of the CSF for luxury companies having a good brand portfolio. In the first part of the thesis, besides examination of the nature and definition of luxury, there are examined and analyzed the most important and famous academic researches about luxury concept and motivations for luxury consumption throughout the history of studying this phenomenon. This bibliographic analysis is complex because it considers luxury management theory from sociological, marketing, economics, psychological and other points of view, therefore the concept of luxury is multidisciplinary. The most of theories identified the people motives for luxury consumption in different time periods, why customers buy luxury and what they are searching for. The result of this chapter is the author’s ranged list of most common motivations and key characteristics of luxury consumption, agreed by the majority of scholars. In the next chapter there is analyzed real data of contemporary luxury market pragmatic researches, tendencies, potential and development of this market, there are investigated the motives of luxury consumption in different countries according to practical modern surveys. Motivation for luxury consumption and CSF of luxury management in the companies – are two sides of one phenomenon, therefore it is important to identify the common associations with luxury of its producers and of its consumers, and it is important to provide the gap analysis if it exists for making the market answer for luxury need of the customers more satisfying. In the last part of the thesis with the help of previously analyzed theoretical and practical data there will be proposed the model of distribution strategy for entering a new market, distribution is one of the most important critical success factors for luxury management and marketing, and with this model will be applied to analyze the real case study of the company producing luxury accessories. In the end of the study and after practical analysis inside the discussion chapter the recommendations will be given for building a successful business strategy in luxury sector.