Managing Status: How Luxury Brands Shape Class Subjectivities in the Service Encounter

Abstract

Although a large body of research has investigated how consumers use goods to signal their status, little is known about how brands manage status. The very few studies that have examined this topic are grounded in the traditional conception of status and focus on the possession and display of status signals. The authors offer an alternative understanding of status management by investigating the role of interactions in the service encounter. Drawing from extensive ethnographic work in luxury stores, they investigate how brands (re)configure the status games that surface in the service encounter. They show that through the material and social cues of the servicescape, brands shape consumers' class subjectivities-that is, they make consumers behave as class subjects who have a specific understanding of their position in the social hierarchy. Thus, managing status requires the active creation and management of consumers as class subjects. There is a shift from managing branded goods that signal status to managing customer experiences that make consumers enact status positions. This research helps identify new ways to manage status brands, especially luxury brands.

To what extent luxury retailing can be smart?

“…Past studies demonstrate the extent to which people create an impression of others on the basis of the clothing brands they wear (Eckhardt et al, 2015;Willems et al, 2012), while the evoking social status affect the object evaluation in terms of estimated price, value and willingness to pay for it (Guinn et al, 2015). In this scenario, luxury usually reminds images of rich people with rich lives, a sort of exclusive and inaccessible lifestyle (Dion and Borraz, 2017;Kapferer, 2012). The consumption of luxury brands is driven by social attributes such as self-expression and self-presentation, and by the need to exhibit social standing (Bian and Forsythe, 2012;Dion and Borraz, 2017;Eckhardt et al, 2015;Willems et al, 2012).…”

“…In this scenario, luxury usually reminds images of rich people with rich lives, a sort of exclusive and inaccessible lifestyle (Dion and Borraz, 2017;Kapferer, 2012). The consumption of luxury brands is driven by social attributes such as self-expression and self-presentation, and by the need to exhibit social standing (Bian and Forsythe, 2012;Dion and Borraz, 2017;Eckhardt et al, 2015;Willems et al, 2012). Therefore, luxury brands can be seen as a symbol of personal and social identity (Tynan et al, 2010), while representing characteristics such as premium quality, heritage of craftsmanship, recognizable style, premium price, uniqueness (represented by the intrinsic scarcity value), and global reputation (Bian and Forsythe, 2012;Dion and Borraz, 2017).…”

“…The consumption of luxury brands is driven by social attributes such as self-expression and self-presentation, and by the need to exhibit social standing (Bian and Forsythe, 2012;Dion and Borraz, 2017;Eckhardt et al, 2015;Willems et al, 2012). Therefore, luxury brands can be seen as a symbol of personal and social identity (Tynan et al, 2010), while representing characteristics such as premium quality, heritage of craftsmanship, recognizable style, premium price, uniqueness (represented by the intrinsic scarcity value), and global reputation (Bian and Forsythe, 2012;Dion and Borraz, 2017). Luxury brands offer a hedonic, multisensorial appeal and attract consumers at an emotional level, in terms of the superior material, experience and symbolic value they provide (Dion and Arnould, 2011;Joy et al, 2014).…”

“…Therefore, these superior qualities have to emphasize the orientation of the individual consumer and the needs of luxury customers (Hennigs et al, 2015). Moreover, the size of the store and the atmosphere synthetized in the flagship stores represent a key element for both positioning strategy of luxury brands (Cervellon and Coudriet, 2013) and identifying the consumers who believe they are socially legitimate to access that spaces (Dion and Borraz, 2017). In this way, the stores synthetize a specific etiquette that consumers are required to align to benefit from those places (luxury stores) (Dion and Borraz, 2017).…”

“…Moreover, the size of the store and the atmosphere synthetized in the flagship stores represent a key element for both positioning strategy of luxury brands (Cervellon and Coudriet, 2013) and identifying the consumers who believe they are socially legitimate to access that spaces (Dion and Borraz, 2017). In this way, the stores synthetize a specific etiquette that consumers are required to align to benefit from those places (luxury stores) (Dion and Borraz, 2017). For this reason, luxury retailers usually locate their flagship stores in the main shopping street of the most important cities (i.e.…”