KOREASCHOLAR

The study of luxury is a rapidly rising star in the firmament of business, management, the arts, media and communication studies. In the discipline of marketing alone, it informs research into corporate strategy (e.g. Mazancourt & Schwartz, 2012; Hennigs, Weidmann, Behrens & Klarmann, 2015), production and consumption in the context of national, regional, local cultures (e.g. Zhan & He, 2012; Schultz & Jain, 2015) and, of course, global brands (Mazzalovo, 2012), just to name a few. Of particular interest to this author is the theoretical challenges and opportunities of an entirely new frontier for the study of luxury and consumption: namely, how do we theorize luxury and luxury consumption in an age of space travel, habitation and tourism? Travel to Mars is fast becoming a reality and space tourism is already rapidly growing as a leisure pursuit for wealthy elites. The trajectory of space travel, and human habitation, in space is, however, evolving in ways that are still not widely reported or communicated to the public. Yet, it is almost certainly the case that the mass consumption of space travel (and future habitats on other planets) will become a reality in the foreseeable future. The anthropocentric vision that has driven the human species to flourish on Earth will also allow us to populate other planets. Guiding this paper are two primary – and hitherto foundational – premises: first, all existing work on luxury and luxury consumption by marketing scholars has taken our continued existence on planet Earth for granted. That is, luxury as we know it (and however one it is defined) occurs within spatial and temporal dimensions that are, broadly speaking, Newtonian (despite the remarkable advances in quantum theory and mechanics), linear, bounded and life-sustaining by virtue of stable sources of energy, water and fuel (at least in the world’s advanced economies). This premise alone accounts for, and explains, for example, much of the current literature on ‘luxury consumption in China’ or ‘India’ or ‘Turkey’ or any other specific locale. My contention is that this premise can no longer be taken for granted in a post-ecological age; second, I wish to develop one or more novel dimensions to the conventional, albeit provocative, literature that argues (rightly, in my view) that consumption of any kind must be central to “theorizations of space and place” (Goodman, Goodman & Redclift, 2010). At the same time, technology companies such as Tesla and Space X are effecting radical transformations in our view of what is possible for human consumption over the next five to twenty years. What is the role and likely transformations in the concept and practice of luxury in this scenario? This is the key question that faces marketing scholars in the next decade and this paper is the first attempt to interrogate the issue.Several scenarios present themselves and should be taken seriously until we devise other frameworks that can satisfactorily tackle the question I have posed. For instance, the ‘bandwagon effect’ (Kastanakis & Balabanis, 2012) helps explain how mass luxury consumption might take off after the first wave of early adopters of space technology and space-led living have indicated their preferences and as private as well as public enterprises innovate to capture the public imagination with regards to the consumption of luxury items in space (Thomas, 2007). Alternatively, we could explore further the implications and modifications in behavioural theories of luxury consumption (Yeoman, 2010) to understand how the antecedents and consequences of popular modes of adoption, use and future purchases might be modified in the Space Age. Last, but certainly not least, one can focus the theoretical lens on transformational consumer research along the lines (and limits) of the consumption of place and space (Goodman, Goodman and Redclift, 2016). This avenue, in my view, affords some intriguing advantages over alternative approaches. As Clarke, Doel and Hoisaux (2003, 80) note, ‘consumption tends to reconfigure space and place, often disrupting, undermining and displacing consumption activities that were once thought of as being related to specific places’. Thus, while we may be reluctant to discard the notion that consumption is essentially geographical, we now need to reconsider what and where those geographies are and what they will mean for us as a species in the next several decades. How will relational networks of consumption work? How can we understand the bodily enactments of consumption and the environmental and metabolic conditions that are a prerequisite for practices of luxury? The corporate implications are numerous and profound as well: the global green/sustainability movements have undoubtedly changed market forces and behavior – can they play another, even more valuable role in the next consumer revolution?

• Ming Lim(University of Leicester, UK)