Luxury Experience and Consumer Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Agenda: An Abstract

Abstract

The twenty-first-century consumers want to interact with brands on a deeper level than just a financial transaction. These consumers aim to form emotional, contextual, and sensory connections with the brands. This activation of emotions, feelings, and cognition helps develop a unique and personal relationship between consumers and brands. The consumers’ desire to establish a special relationship with luxury brands, however, is more robust. As a result, luxury brands have become synonymous with going above and beyond to provide consumers with a personalized and unforgettable experience. Luxury experiences are developed by giving consumers symbolic or experiential value in addition to functional value. Store environment, online website experience, social media, and individualized brand communication all have symbolic or experiential significance. However, the onset of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown restrictions proved to be a roadblock for luxury brands in providing offline brand experience to consumers towards the end of 2019. Subsequently, the brands shifted to online platforms to serve the consumers and create memorable experiences. As a result, the sales for online luxury products and services increased from 12% to 23% in 2020. Surprisingly, the industries focusing on offering luxury experiences such as hospitality, cruises, fine dining, private jets, fine wines, and gourmet food saw faster and more promising growth than the luxury goods industries. Hence, it indicates consumers’ growing interest in luxury experiences against luxury goods. The luxury experience quickly transforms the luxury sector by providing consumers with an experiential value. This study focused on holistically comprehending the luxury experience and consumer behavior studies to date amidst rapid transformations. We propose a framework showing the primary contexts, ideas, and variables utilized to investigate the luxury experience and consumer behavior based on our assessment of 130 papers from the very first paper published in this domain to the latest papers as of 2020. Further, we highlight the importance of identifying the relevant sample characteristics, research methods, and theories to extract quality information from the studies. These findings present important implications to academicians and practitioners. Theoretically, the framework presented in the study exemplifies the influence of consumer and firm characteristics on designing and developing luxury experience studies to understand the consumer’s attitudes, intentions, and behaviors toward luxury brands. Furthermore, the framework informs researchers of the existing gaps in the luxury experience literature and future research areas. The proposed areas for future research can help scholars of marketing and branding to explore the field of luxury experience and consumer behavior to further contribute to the knowledge co-creation process. Similarly, the suggested future research areas can help practitioners, especially brand managers, develop strategies to provide an exceptional luxury experience to consumers.