The global luxury market is relentlessly growing over the last few decades, defying the global economic crisis. It is estimated that the luxury market is made up by a continuously enlarging heterogeneous group of 330 to 380 million consumers worldwide. The consumption of luxuries goes beyond the riches and wealth of countries, as the highest luxury spenders are to be found in places like the Middle East, Japan, and China. Luxury goods’ penetration relatively to GDP is low in countries like Germany and the U.S. and high in Italy, France, and South Korea. Wealth and economics alone cannot explain the economics underlying luxury consumption; culture is an important driver of growth in this sector. Culture gives meaning to luxuries, affects the perceived value and motivations to buy luxury goods, and determines luxuries’ signaling power and potency as differentiators and identity signifiers. Today, despite the size, growth and geographical spread of the luxury goods market, cross-cultural research is limited and rather scattered in different fields. Much of the research undertaken draws from Hofstede’s typology of culture and focuses on a narrow range of conceptual issues. The purpose of this presentation is to review and summarize existing cross-cultural research on luxury products and to identify fruitful future research directions that will expand our understanding of luxury goods marketing. In addition, attention will be given to examining current trends and behaviors in the field

We propose a conceptual model of MO in emerging markets by drawing on industrial organization and economic sociology, and outline factors which can better explain the determinant-strategy-performance relationships in emerging markets. We provide two country examples (Russia and China), and propose future research directions for our conceptual model.

In high-performance cold work applications, tool failure depends on the predominating loading conditions. Typical failure mechanisms are a combination of abrasive wear, adhesive wear, plastic deformation, cracking and edge crumbling. In this paper we demonstrate how the microstructure of tool steels can be positively influenced by modifying the alloying system and the production route to meet the demands of the different loading situations which occur during operation. The investigation was focused on ductility, fatigue strength and wear resistance. Theoretical considerations were confirmed by practical tests.