High Design: Luxury market forced to rethink discretionary spending
Discretionary purchases have taken on new meaning this year, leading many consumers, high-end brands and retailers to reconsider the state of the luxury goods market. Home Accents Today spoke with luxury market expert Pam Danziger, founder of market research firm Unity Marketing, about how luxury brands have had to reevaluate their priorities during the pandemic, and what home furnishings companies need to do to stay ahead of the curve.
From your perspective, what sets a brand or a product as apart as luxury?
Luxury is not a term that I like to use. It is grossly overused so its punch in lost. Even worse, it means everything and nothing because luxury, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
From an industry perspective, luxury is usually used to signify the top of a brand’s line; its priciest offering. Strategically, brands use that top-tier price point as a decoy that provides a comparison for the shopper to attract them more to the products in the mid-range of their line. Some brands claim to sell only luxury-quality goods, but even if you study them you also find the same decoy cognitive manipulation going on. Tiffany sells lower-priced sterling silver jewelry, Chanel