An intercultural comparison of the perception of luxury among young consumers

Recently, has there been a change in the perception of luxury: from an elitist concept to a consideration of luxury as a many‐faceted issue. In the last few years, it has become clear that luxury consumption is open to different kinds of consumers, and that it therefore contributes to defining differentiated identities. This article analyses the perception of the concept of luxury and ranks some adjectives defining luxury among an international sample of young people. In order to test the research questions empirically, a statistically non‐representative sample of 233 undergraduate management students from European, Asian and American Universities was set up. These students worked in teams to respond to a two steps research process: - In the first step, students were asked to define luxury in their native language and in English; - In a second phase, respondents were asked to rank 10 adjectives proposed by researchers and defining luxury depending on the relative weight of each adjective to explain the concept of luxury. Our results show that the perception of luxury is multi‐faceted and includes elements both conspicuous and status oriented elements and others that are more oriented towards the hedonistic and emotional dimensions. Also We found strong cross cultural differences when evaluating the different dimensions of luxury through the proposed adjectives; these differences, however, are not defined by the level of maturity of the luxury marketing in each country, as we had supposed at the beginning of our research, but they also present variations inside the most developed markets. The first part of our article is devoted to presenting the concept of luxury and its evolution in the literature concerning luxury perception and luxury evaluation In the second part, we develop the research questions and we explain the methodology adopted for this research. The third part presents the main empirical results concerning the young people’s perceptions of luxury, the evaluation of the different adjectives proposed and the cross cultural differences discovered.Finally, we present a general discussion and the conclusion of this research