Luxury Branding

In business, luxury can be seen as a pronounced ambition of those companies that cater to the market of highly affluential consumers. Luxury branding is the critical managerial tool to express the individual company’s interpretation of that ambition. Branding has valuable inward- and outward-oriented functions, providing identification within and advertising outside the company. This mirrors luxury’s two-sided nature which integrates individual hedonism with ostentatious communication. This chapter introduces several facets and cases of luxury branding; outlines the contemporary research landscape on luxury branding (based on a review of 143 articles); proposes a system of five luxury branding core tasks leading from brand targeting to shaping, experience design, extension, and protection of luxury brands; follows modern publications’ roots to their most notable sources (based on analysis of 7,248 references); and discusses the topic from five stakeholder perspectives. The key insight for successful luxury businesses emerges on the subject of carefully balancing commercial growth with qualitative ambition.