With increasing competition in the global marketplace and the shift marketing activities from product-centered to consumer-centered, companies make efforts to collect information on overseas markets and global consumers prior to the initiation of new marketing activities. The concept of customer equity has been introduced as a tool to continously secure customers and create profits in the future. These trends also play an important role in the fashion industry since many fashion brands are growing into global companies, but need to adapt their innovative marketing strategies to different market environments, such as cultural settings. For this reason, more understanding of the individual consumers and the responses to marketing strategies is required. Furthermore, the trend cycle of SPA brands tends to be very short, so corporate profitability is highly sensitive to consumers’ attitudinal changes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of cultural value in the global customer equity model focusing on SPA brands. For that, fashion SPA brands which are active globally will be selected and surveys will be distributed in several countries in order to compare and analyze the impact of cultural value on customer equity. The expected results of this study will contribute to the global market segmentation in terms of improved marketing efforts. Marketers will be able to understand which one of the three customer equity drivers – relationship, value, brand – is most important to the cultural setting. Furthermore, the findings will indicate which cultural value is most dominant in the respective country to direct marketing approaches towards these values. Through this improved knowledge over customers, companies can lower their marketing investments, analyze the individual profitability of customers to their company and communicate in more efficient ways to the customers. By gaining more knowledge about the consumer behavior in the respective country, SPA brands will be able to better understand product preferences and purchase patterns and therefore plan product style and life cycles in more efficient ways, which is crucial in such a fast continously changing marketplace. In this way, this study extends the research scope towards a cultural perspective on customer equity.

Sales of luxury goods have increased drastically in the Asian marketplace over the past decade and therefore imply high potential for further future developments. While Japan has been an important market to luxury brands for a longer period of time, especially China and South Korea have gained in importance due to high sales volumes and increased desire to purchase luxury goods. Especially due to the economic crisis in Europe, luxury brands have to focus on the potential of these emrging Asian countries. In order to adapt and improve the marketing communication strategies successfully to the respective countries, an intensive analysis of the local luxury market, local competitors and the performance of leading luxury brands have to be examined. This is especially crucial to luxury brands since consumers are highly sensitive to the brand image and identitty which is why marketing strategies and brand positioning have to be considered carefully. The purpose of this study is 1) to examine the current luxury market in Japan, China and South Korea according to major fashion industries; 2) to analyze the critical success factors and marketing strategies of leading and aspiring local and global fashion luxury brands in the respective country 3) to give meaningful implications for existing and aspiring luxury brands. For that, after giving an overview of the luxury market in the respective country, case studies on leading and aspiring luxury brands in the major fashion cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo) will be conducted to examine critical success factors. By that, we will give an overview on the market entry and marketing strategy, such as social media, the usage of IT, and general ads as well as retail trends and communication channels. The findings indicate the current trends of luxury fashion brands in China, South Kore and Japan. Through this data review, case studies and suggestions, both academia and industry will gain important insights of the current tendencies of brands and consumers. Global marketers will understand the Asian luxury market better; local brands may find implications of how to enter other Asian markets and aspiring brands can learn about the critical success factors in the market.