Current forces of change such as the digital transformation, the increasing importance of service and experiential luxury, new customer groups with diverse cultural backgrounds and spending habits or rising expectations with regards to transparency and sustainability, force brands to rethink the way they do business. In some cases, this means quickly building up new capabilities, which often exist outside a company’s own organizational structure and cannot easily be developed or integrated. Luxury ecosystems are considered one way of dealing with the challenges of an ever more dynamic, fast-changing and multi- faceted environment. In luxury ecosystems, capabilities are built in collaboration with partners from the same or different industries that share a common vision. However, the ecosystem approach, especially when actively communicated to the outside world and made part of the brand’s DNA, partially stands in contrast to the more traditional notion of exclusivity and the luxury brand as a bounded, proprietary system shrouded in mystery. Based on a qualitative approach, including multiple case studies and interviews, this study examines the opportunities of an ecosystem mindset for Swiss luxury companies, explores different forms and identifies the success factors and limits of the concept.

Not only luxury brands, but also fast fashion brands such as ZARA and H&M have successfully opened flagship stores in prime locations such as Ginza, Tokyo. The market-entry strategy via flagship stores appears to be successful, as numerous companies have adopted it. However, for this strategy to work, it is important to consider and verify not only the place, but also the product, price, and promotion aspects. This study systematically investigates the flagship store strategy by comparing the strategies of luxury brands, represented by Chanel and Louis Vuitton, and those of SPA (Specialty store retailer of Private label Apparel) brands, represented by ZARA, developed by the Spanish Inditex Corporation.

The current paper examines how parasocial interaction (PSI), imaginary and illusory relationships with fashion designers, enhances luxury consumers’ social media contributions. SEM results (Mplus 7.4) from an online survey with visual stimuli (n = 555) show that PSI with fashion designers increases opinion leadership and content production. Specifically, opinion leadership mediates the impact of PSI on user-generated content (UGC) creation, but not electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Luxury consumers only produce UGC when their leadership abilities are emboldened through PSI with fashion designers. Overall, these findings contribute to a growing body of digital luxury studies while helping luxury firms to counterbalance their legacies and brand awareness through social media.

Consumers become increasingly concerned about the impact of business on the society and social media platforms facilitate the spread of their concern worldwide. This research investigates how consumers react (i.e. Electronic Word-of-Mouth) when brands initiate good or bad practices in the context of social and environmental corporate responsibility. Three experiments provide a multifaceted representation of the phenomenon. We examine the role of consumers’ self-conscious moral emotions (i.e. guilt and pride), in combination with brand engagement in self-concept (BESC) and brand loyalty, in explaining consumers’ reaction. The results will help scholars and managers to better understand and address the spread of consumers’ e-WOM relating to what they perceive as responsible or irresponsible brand behaviors.

This research aims to examine consumer e-deal proneness and anticipatory regret toward ‘daily deals’ offers from group buying websites. Data collected from a consumer panel yielded 787 useable questionnaires which were analysed through Structural Equation Modelling. The results suggest that the antecedents, namely price consciousness and susceptibility to interpersonal influence have a strong and positive influence with consumer attitudes towards e-deals. The results are validated across three different product categories (i.e., beauty, food, and travel). Consumers with favourable attitudes towards daily deals are more likely to purchase them. Furthermore, the results suggest no significant difference in consumers’ intention to buy daily deals when the consumer has to evaluate between high vs low regret circumstances. The findings suggested many practical lessons for planners of marketing strategy for the retail and e-commerce marketplace in an international context.

Consumption of secondhand luxury goods is rapidly developing in China, but the market share of secondhand luxury goods in the overall luxury market is still below that of developing countries and the world’s average level. This study uses a multi-method approach to promote the increase of secondhand luxury goods consumption in China. First, a qualitative study was carried out to identify potential attitudes and barriers towards Chinese consumers’ consumption of secondhand luxury goods. Then, based on qualitative research results and prior studies, the barriers associated with purchasing secondhand luxury goods were identified as five categories of perceived risks. The research model was verified through quantitative research. The results demonstrated that perceived value of luxury goods was negatively affected by four types of perceived risk, but not by financial risk. In addition, perceived value positively affected purchase intention of secondhand luxury goods.

This research uses a practical attempt to explore further determinants of consumer behaviour needs to be considered in modern TAM’s. Based on This study applies a qualitative and a quantitative method. On the one hand, qualitative data was collected with the World Café approach and on the other hand, the quantitative data was collected by an online-survey, resulting in an effective sample of 126 respondents. The findings show that consumers attitude towards self-driving cars is positive and negative. Those descriptive variables for the context of autonomous driving have to be identified as a first step. Conclusively, implications and future research topics are presented.