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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on mothers as key influencers in luxury retailing contexts. Design/methodology/approach Using a semiotic interpretation of mothers’ discourses, the authors underline the identity motivations for purchasing luxury apparel for their pre-adolescent children. Findings The paper shows that when shopping for luxury brands for their pre-adolescent children, mothers manage discrepancies between their “real” and “idealised” selves as well as the pushes and pulls of being a mother and a woman. Research limitations/implications The findings point to possible future research on this topic, particularly with regard to investigating how luxury stores and retailers can adapt so as to satisfy mothers’ identity quest. Practical implications Managers of luxury brand retail spaces looking at the future of retailing could analyse their store environment in the light of these mothers’ identity-related motivations. As well as focussing on how children look, store layout and merchandising should provide different spaces for mothers’ identity expression, using new in-store digital technologies. Originality/value This study is one of the first to analyse luxury shopping for children taking the point of view of mothers. The paper underlines how young mothers build their new maternal identity and their projected relationship with their child through purchases of children’s luxury goods in specific retail environments.

With a rapidly growing number of consumers experiencing migration around the world, the need for new research methodologies to understand ethnic consumption becomes more pressing for managers operating in global markets. The objective of this contribution is to show that Greimasian semiotics is a very relevant interpretive framework to capture the symbolic and dynamic dimensions of ethnicity. In the context of a three-cities research programme (Paris, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur), we use the spatial identity semiotic square to interpret consumers' discourses in the context of dominated and non-dominated acculturation experiences. We show that informants' discourses are structured around four identity anchors and that dual culture consumers use products, brands, ingredients and retail environments to construct their identities. Managing two spatial reference points within a coherent self can be, at times, challenging for consumers coming from ‘third’ or ‘first’ world countries. The issue is even more pressing for ethnic consumers who experience discrimination, since they are constantly reminded of their difference. This research confirms the relevance of semiotics, in terms of market research methodology, for grasping the deeper symbolic dimensions of ethnic consumers' discourse.