Intimacy of the Russian upper middle class with luxury fashion

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Russia has developed into one of the most important markets for luxury goods in the world. The aim of this study is to determine the factors influencing Russian consumers’ intentions to purchase luxury fashion goods. We focus on the growing high-middle- and middle-class consumer behavior patterns. This study attempts to contest practitioners’ knowledge and folklore with research hypotheses and to evaluate these in a rigorous quantitative process. We investigate the factors influencing Russian consumers’ intentions to purchase goods of luxury fashion brands based on two different models. The “Attitude toward Luxury Brands” (social-adjustive function) quantifies the extent to which luxury brands are facilitating self-expression of the owner and the projection of a particular image in socia settings. Additionally, we use the “Attitude toward Luxury Brands” (value-expressive function) in order to quantify the degree to which luxury brands are expressing the buyer’s self (beliefs, attitudes, values). The results of our analysis confirm practitioners’ prior beliefs that Russian consumer behavior patterns in luxury markets predominantly correspond to characteristics of symbolic consumption.