Luxury Brand Management Insights and Opportunities

The luxury industry is large, complex and very competitive and one that has flourished significantly in the past couple of decades (Okonkwo, 2009a; Ko et al., 2016). Luxury was once known as a quiet industry that was driven by product excellence and managed by families. Its value proposition was made up of a mix of high-quality products, brand heritage, unique knowledge, exclusivity, personalisation of services, and bespoke communications fused with long-term relationships with selected clientele and categorised by high prices and prestigious physical stores (Kapferer, 2014). Most of the above is still relevant and true for the luxury industry, but nowadays much of the industry is driven by large conglomerates. The economic concentration is increasing with the top ten of the largest companies accounting for more than 50 percent of all revenues in the luxury industry (Deloitte, 2016). From a research perspective manuscripts on luxury brand management have proven to be historically popular amongst the readership of the Journal of Brand Management (Powell, 2014), and the areas continuing importance further reinforced in recent years (Brexendorf et al., 2014; Kapferer, 2014). We start our introduction by taking the corporate brand management perspective and provide insights into the largest luxury corporates. We then present an overview of some of the very latest research coming to the fore in luxury brand management and conclude by providing an orientation for the remainder of this book and chapters