Purpose -Luxury shopping touches upon many facets of experience, ranging from the strategic objectives of the brand to the subjective, interpersonal experiences of individuals. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the flagship's form and appearance: including architecture, decor, arrangement of space, symbolic elements, location, and its function to better understand the role of the aesthetic environment of the flagship as a means of communicating the brand's objectives, which are mediated by a consumer's perception of the brand and store, the goals he or she brings to the experience, and the situational determinants of the shopping experience. Design/methodology/approach -The authors explore the strategic role and customer experience of flagships in major international locations through interviews with luxury flagship managers and customers. Site visits were made to multiple brands. Ethnographic research on the consumer experience was carried out in two locations of a major brand's flagship store. Findings -The authors arrive at definite characteristics comprising branding strategies, retail practices, and the consumer experience. The findings contribute to a more comprehensive delineation of the meaning and purpose of luxury flagships.Research limitations/implications -The exploratory study focused broadly on managers' views, and on the customer experience of one brand in two major cities. Comprehensive interviews and survey research should be conducted in targeted stores with a focus on customers at these flagships. Practical implications -The paper yields practical information which can be used by brands to more effectively provide a satisfying customer experience. The paper adds to the empirical research on the aesthetic dimensions of flagship stores, its function in relation to the brand, and the experience it provides customers. Social implications -This empirical study explores the meaning and usage of branded spaces and retailing strategies to those who experience the environment: managers and customers. Originality/value -The paper explores the phenomena of the luxury flagship experience along two pivotal points: the point of view of managers who are charged with promoting the goals set forth by the brand and that of customers who experience the luxury environment on their own terms, as well as responding to the sensorial environment they encounter.
No abstract
In March 1985 the film scholar Charlotte Herzog sent a brief letter to the German film theorist Heide Schlüpmann, who was at this point preparing a special issue of Frauen und Filme (Women and Film) -the journal she edited -on costume in cinema. In the letter, Herzog expressed her desire to contribute to this, and, fearing she may be too late, resolved at least to share a preliminary outline for her own collection of essays on the subject, which she was planning with her colleague Jane Gaines. This volume, provisionally titled Fabrications: Body and Costume in Our Screen History, would eventually become something of a manifesto for a field yet to emerge, undoubtedly in part thanks to the forceful introductory text written by Gaines. 1 In the meantime, Herzog concluded her letter by writing: "It is reassuring to know there are other feminists interested in the same subject, and who recognize it is an important aspect of filmmaking and women audiences, etc." 2 Herzog's almost-conspiratorial note speaks volumes of how rare an alliance of kindred spirits this would have felt like. Equally eloquent is her qualifying the mutually shared interest as a feminist one, which suggests at least two things: one, feminist academics interested in problems of fashion, costume and the body were rather an anomaly in 1985; and two, Herzog believed that the subject needed a feminist approach in particular, presumably in order to break the silence on it in mainstream, largely male-dominated film theory.This anecdotal piece of evidence speaks to the uneasy development of fashion in cinema as a field. Indeed, problems of how cinema interacts with fashion and dress were routinely marginalized in the histories and theories of film -as well as fashion. 3 When the subject was pursued, it was often done so by individuals working alone or in discrete, isolated hubs. Largely considered an "interdisciplinary niche" within film studies, 4 the field evolved unevenly and unprogrammatically, from different disciplinary roots that were sometimes at odds with one another. Dress historian Lou Taylor, for example, observed that the study of fashion in film is "deeply divided" between theoretical and object-based approaches, pointing to a gap -and a sense of antagonism -between humanities scholars (such as Gaines and Herzog, presumably) who pursue nuanced intellectual arguments and museum curators who rely on object-based expertize in collecting and exhibiting costume. 5 Another major hurdle to the development of a bona fide field with a cohesive identity has been an underlying dilemma about what exactly constitutes its object of study: is it costume, or is it, rather fashion? -a dilemma that brings with
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