Design Similarity as a Tool for Sustainable New Luxury Product Adoption: The Role of Luxury Brand Knowledge and Product Ephemerality

Abstract

Despite rising demand for brands that can combine luxury with the zeal to make the world better, many luxury brands still hesitate to introduce environmentally (or green) sustainable new luxury products. However, indulgence without guilt is possible by correctly marketing sustainable new luxury products. Even more, introducing sustainable new luxury products can be an effective way for luxury companies to differentiate their offering and get competitive advantage. We argue that luxury and sustainability are not incompatible concepts when luxury brands do employ the right product design strategy. Indeed, the effectiveness of two new green luxury product design strategies have been investigated in depth in this chapter. First, the green new product might be similar in design to luxury company’s previous non-green products. Second, the green new product might be similar in design to models of a different, non-luxury company specialized in green production. We investigate the effect of design strategy on new product purchase intention, and propose that such an effect might be affected by fit (i.e. moderated mediated) by the combination of one product-related factor, such as product ephemerality (i.e., how long lasting the new product is), and one consumer-related factor, such as consumers’ luxury brand knowledge (i.e., how much consumers know about the brand and its past). We empirically test our account through an experimental study, whose results show that lowly and medium knowledgeable consumers might react negatively to a new green product similar to green company’s models due to reduced fit perceptions when the new green luxury product is ephemeral. Such an effect was not observed for durable new luxury products.