Distance and Alternative Signals of Status: A Unifying Framework

Abstract

In the past decades, as traditional luxury goods and conspicuous consumption have become more mainstream and lost some of their signaling value, new alternative signals of status (e.g., vintage, inconspicuous consumption, ugly luxury) have progressively emerged. This research applies grounded theory method to establish a novel framework that systematically unifies existing conceptualizations, findings, and observations on alternative signals of status. The proposed framework organizes alternative signals in terms of their distance from traditional status symbols and categorizes them along six focal dimensions: time (new/old), quantity (many possessions/few possessions), conspicuousness (conspicuous/inconspicuous), aesthetics (beautiful/ugly), culture (highbrow/lowbrow), and pace of life (slow/fast). This parsimonious framework captures various consumption phenomena related to status signaling, unifies existing theories, and generates a fruitful agenda for future research.

Minimalist Aesthetics: conveying an image through clothing style

“…of future studies on minimalism in fashion consumption. For instance, some studies suggest that minimalist aesthetics can be associated with terms such as inconspicuous minimalism (Pangarkar et al, 2021), or inconspicuous consumption (Bellezza, 2023), also called quiet luxury, where products, generally fashion products, are marked by subtle brand signals (Brandão;Barbedo, 2023). However, no studies have investigated this association to date.…”

Sharing luxury consumption on social media platforms: Motive inferences and downstream consequences

“…On the receiver's side, consumers with luxury competencies are considered credible sources and likely to be opinion leaders or influencers (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). Observers perceive consumers who have luxury expertise to be creative and are willing to collaborate with them (Desmichel et al, 2020), whereas inconspicuous luxury consumers are less likely to be misconstrued as using luxury to show off (Bellezza, 2023).…”

“…In addition, highlighting the competencies associated with luxury consumption only reduces but fails to eliminate the negative inferences. Future research may test whether untraditional luxury consumption (Bellezza, 2023) could signal status while protecting authenticity perception and interpersonal attraction. New alternative signals of status such as ephemeral luxury (i.e., products that represent luxury brands' innovative designs, technology, and aesthetics; Desmichel et al, 2020) or ugly luxury (i.e., expensive products that do not conform to the ideals of beauty and typically entail odd color combinations or patterns; Cesareo et al, 2023) need to be examined.…”

Methodological fitness-for-purpose in the phygital age: the case of luxury

“…As this study and many others show, the pendulum has already started to swing in the direction of more interpretivist research (Christodoulides and Wiedmann, 2022), as evidenced by the fact that almost one-third of all empirical studies in the field of luxury now adopt qualitative methodologies, in full or in part, as evidenced by our own survey of the literature. Some positive examples from our perusal of recent luxury research might include, for example, the constructivist qualitative research on luxury lodges by Manfreda et al (2023), which is strong on reflexivity, insider positionality and contextualisation; Bellezza (2022), which is a good example of the use of the grounded theory in luxury research; the study by Zha et al (2022) of the importance of sensory experiences in brand engagement (including, but not exclusive to luxury); Wu’s (2022) marketing-oriented ethnographic study using field observation; Philippe et al (2022), which is a fine example of qualitative content analysis using imagery; and Hlady-Rispal and Blancheton’s (2022) study of two French luxury clusters, which exemplifies contextualised research. One pleasing observation we have made is that some of this qualitative research has involved luxury industry-connected individuals mobilising their personal networks to access key actors and provide deep insight through interviews and case studies (Loranger and Roeraas, 2023; Javornik et al , 2021; Bai et al , 2022).…”