How men interpret women’s luxury brand signals

Abstract

Purpose Women’s conspicuous display of luxury brands is known to serve the purpose of sending signals to other women, but little is known about how men interpret those signals. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate how men interpret the signals sent by women displaying luxury brands. Design/methodology/approach An interpretivist approach and phenomenological methods were applied, involving interviews with selected men in Hong Kong. Findings The men interviewed suggested that if a woman’s overall image matches that of the brands she displays and the situation, luxurious brands can amplify the woman’s beauty and perceived class status. However, if these factors clash, men react negatively and tend to view the woman as engaging in impression management and pretending to have high social status unjustifiably. Research limitations/implications The sample for this phenomenological study was limited to Hong Kong men only. Culture must, almost by definition, influence men’s views toward women and branded products, so similar exploratory research in other cultures seems justified. Practical implications The findings suggest that marketers should offer “brand education” to help make their female consumers aware of the images their products are trying to establish, and what are the appropriate usage situations. Such consumer education would also reduce the risk of negative image transfer from the brand user to the brands. Originality/value The current understanding of female luxury brand signals is limited to female-vs-female intra-sexual competition. By examining how men interpret female luxury brand signals, this research addresses an important research gap.

The role of intangible attributes of luxury brands for signalling status: A systematic literature review

“…Upgrading is the preferred strategy for consumers with a strong self‐brand connection, who are unlikely to leave the brand if a dissimilar consumer starts using it (Wang & John, 2019). A luxurious brand can amplify a woman's apparent beauty and perceived class status in the eyes of certain consumers (Lai & Prendergast, 2019). Similarly, men evaluate other men driving a luxury car as rivals and mate poachers rather than friends (Hennighausen et al, 2016).…”

“…Future work may explore the long-term effects of consumption resources and fairness values on brand attitude (Lee et al, 2018) • Future research in other cultures could reveal whether there are universal signals perceived by men while seeing unknown women with luxury brands. Explore potential decoupling between luxury and conspicuousness (Lai & Prendergast, 2019) • Understand how the presence of dissimilar brand users influences the brand's image and meanings. Explore consumers' characteristics among those who do not respond to the presence of dissimilar users at all (Wang & John, 2019) • Assess social influence and norms in the relationship between self-image congruence and consumer attitude toward brands as well as analyse the relationship between personality traits and brand image (Klabi, 2020) • Understand the effects of different personality traits on luxury consumption to identify the existence of variants of conspicuous brand users (Li et al, 2020) History, heritage and experiences…”