How do Millennials fit in the Luxury Industry? Insight on their Characteristics, Motivations and Consumption Behavior.

Millennials, who are today approximately 2 billion around the world, are about to become one of the largest spending generation in history. This valuable segment that is considered to be the newcomer in the luxury market is with its considerable population size and potential purchasing power of crucial significance for the luxury industry. Today the most important is to be aware that millennials have different luxury needs from those of their parents or grandparents. They want luxury that fits their expectations and millennials will shape a complete new style of luxury, revealing new approaches and new purchasing practices. This thesis aims to highlight the relationship between millennials and luxury by firstly discussing and exploring the characteristics that qualify and represent millennials and how these characteristics affect their purchase and consumption behavior and secondly by analyzing how these characteristics and consumption patterns apply to the luxury industry. In order to address the problematic this thesis is organized into several parts and chapters. The first part of this thesis aspire to implement a thorough literature review relating previous studies regarding the definition and importance of the millennial generation, their main characteristics, a concise overview of the history of the luxury industry as well as a synopsis of its main characteristics and definitions and finally the actual relationship between millennials and the luxury industry is presented, emphasizing their point of view regarding the industry. Then, the second part of this thesis covers a practical analysis through an inductive reasoning with the fundamental idea to explore how the specific characteristics of millennials influence their consumer behavior and purchase motivations and how these apply to the luxury industry. Afterwards managerial implications are discussed as well as research limitations and leads for future researches.Master [120] en sciences de gestion, Université catholique de Louvain, 201