Perceptions, attitudes and luxury brands : an Australian study of consumers' perceptions of and attitudes to luxury brands

The Australian market for luxury brands has been largely overlooked, but in the first decade of the new millennium it has quietly developed into a success story for the luxury industry with “international luxury executives consistently remarking that Australia is a surprisingly sophisticated market” [23]. Spurred by a growing middle class and increased disposable income, the democratisation of luxury is seen in the Australian market place in much the same way as it is in the rest of the world. This process of democratisation and the underlying strength of the Australian economy have been key drivers of growth in the luxury brand sector in Australia [22]. This chapter examines how consumer perceptions drive attitudes to luxury brands in Australia. We extend the basic model of perceptions and attitudes to include the impact of consumers’ general attitudes to luxury and their familiarity with luxury brands on this relationship. We consider the literature on perceptions and attitudes to develop the conceptual framework that forms the basis of the research. This overview includes conceptualisations of the constructs and their relationships with each other, and provides justification for the hypotheses that we test in our empirical study. In the later part of the chapter we describe the results of our research. In particular we consider how the perceived degree of brand luxury, brand familiarity and general attitudes to luxury interact to affect attitudes to luxury brands. We conclude the paper by considering the limitations of the research, by highlighting a number of theoretical and managerial implications, and by outlining future research that may contribute to our understanding of luxury brands.