By M. Isi Eromosele

There are a few particular solutions that can help your luxury brand feel more appropriate, yet still aspirational to those core luxury customers and even to those newer customers for whom luxury goods are a stretch purchase. 

These solutions are based on the simple fact that two luxury goods drivers that have become more important in the category over the last decade will not go away: People will still want to lead enjoyable lives with meaning, and they’ll still want to feel connected to the world around them.

Logically, it makes a great deal of sense that in an industry that has undergone a tremendous amount of change recently, these types of drivers would emerge. They speak to the ultimate expression of true substance and quality; the sense of permanence that consumers seek to gain through their purchase of luxury brands.

Traditional luxury brands provide consumers with a sense of permanence by promising longevity based on their heritage of craftsmanship.  As the world of luxury has expanded, consumers wanted more reasons to believe that they were not making purchases they’d regret; that the products, services and experiences they chose to spend their money on would last. 

By working harder to address these permanence related drivers, brands would begin to make their customers feel more comfortable with indulgences, big, or small.

Offer Strategic Immersions

The great storytellers that they are, luxury brands can invite their customers to immerse themselves in their world through the use of exquisite words, visuals, environments and high level service. Presenting an opportunity for immersion directly answers consumers’ desires to feel that they’re truly enjoying their lives.

In reaching consumers who want to indulge in fulfilling their desires, but are watching the stock market warily, luxury brands can make the immersion and subsequent purchase transitionally smoother.  In taking this approach, luxury brands need to ensure that what they’re offering is special and valuable, but not through a price cut in the traditional sense.

Provide Personalization

A large part of luxury consumers’ willingness to pay premium prices comes from their expectation that a brand will go out of its way to attend to their personal and customized preferences. Customers must feel that they’re being treated as valued individuals when they’re consuming luxury goods.  

Personalization conveys this well and the most effective type of personalization is tied to a particular time and place.  It will not only make consumers’ interaction with your brand more meaningful, but also provide them with a story that they can tell to others, thus

creating a positive memory, one that will etch itself in their minds.

Demonstrate Social Responsibility

For those core consumers who can comfortably make luxury purchases but feel they shouldn’t due to changing social norms, the best justification for indulgence is a sense that, by engaging with the brand they’re considering, they’re contributing to something

arger than themselves.  

To provide permission for indulgence, luxury brands should consider aligning themselves in a meaningful way with relevant social causes.  When done in an authentic and significant manner, it creates a sense of connection between the brand, the consumer and the rest of the world in a way that is particularly powerful.

Luxury brands can heighten awareness of significant social commitments by connecting each customer purchase to a charitable donation or providing additional opportunities for customers to support particular helping society initiatives.

In a way, this is a softer, more authentic version of aspiration that creates a deeper sense of permanence.  Consumers now seek a sense of significance and permanence not merely by purchasing well-crafted goods that they can pass on for generations, but by creating their own unique stamp on the world around them through a meaningfully rich, full, positive life. 

If we need to look for a silver lining in the effect of this economic downturn on the luxury category, we can find it in this: it reveals that the category and consumer motivations to engage with it, isn’t nearly as shallow as some might believe.  Luxury brands should embrace this shift, and to the degree that they can, help consumers realize these new aspirations.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Copyright Control © 2012 Oseme Group