Abstract

Luxury branding has received much attention from marketing and consumer research scholars. Yet, research into how consumers themselves shape luxury brand meanings is underdeveloped. Following the resurgence of the application of theories of social practices in consumer research, we offer a novel and comprehensive typology of luxury consumption practices. In doing so, we shed light on how personalized meanings of brand luxury are emerging in the private sphere of everyday life, as luxury consumers integrate various materials, meanings, and competencies within their practice performances. The findings provide important insights for both scholars and practitioners in developing a more holistic understanding of the multi-dimensionality and fluidity of luxury brand meanings in the context of contemporary consumer culture.

Introduction

The idea of luxury has been used to signify status and power, providing an “illuminating entrée into a basic political issue, namely, the nature of social order” (Berry, 1994, p. 6). However, the sociocultural shifts within contemporary luxury markets undermine this received view. Most notably, the activities of luxury brands – which diversify into new international markets, use divergent ideological and cultural imaginaries, and combine high perceived prestige with prices accessible to middle-class consumers – offer multiple possibilities as to how contemporary consumers can (re-)interpret the meaning of ‘luxury’. Consequently, what constitutes the nature of luxury branding today is disputed, subjective, and personalized. Much of the previous research on luxury brand consumption has been conducted under the productcentric assumption of a predetermined relationship between consumer perceptions and luxury brand meanings, where ‘luxury’ was conceived to be “a relatively stable, unproblematic and predictable concept” (Roper, Caruana, Medway, & Murphy, 2013, p. 375). However, there have been calls for alternative cultural and consumer-centric approaches to extend the product-centric perspectives of luxury branding (Roper et al., 2013; Tynan, McKechnie, & Chhuon, 2010).