Generations' Attitudes and Behaviours in the Luxury Sector

Introduction

In the last decades, the luxury industry has witnessed different shifts in consumer behaviour. The perception of young generations towards the concept of luxury has changed, the awareness towards sustainability has increased steeply and, as a consequence, luxury brands have to constantly intercept those changes to adapt their strategies. For example, the rise of social media communication has led luxury companies to fulfil their need to change their strategies leveraging more on the social media communication (Mosca and Casalegno, 2016), on the adoption of multi-channels’ strategy to sell they products (Lee et al., 2020) or to consider the behaviour and needs of new generational cohorts (de Kerviler and Rodriguez, 2016; Rodrigues and Rodrigues, 2019; Kapferer and Denizeau, 2020; Jain and Mishra, 2020).

It appears neatly that today, more than ever, it is relevant to analyse and identify the different trends in the demand of consumers and how these trends vary from one generation to another. The notion of generation is very important. From a theoretical perspective, generational theorists have well identified the differences that arise in consumer behaviour from one generation to another. Companies, if they want to maintain their competitive advantage in their own market, have to differentiate their strategies to stay relevant to their target market. To do so it is necessary to be acquainted with generational cohorts and generational segmentation.

Usually, the generational cohorts used in market segmentation are four (considering just the population above 18 years old): baby boomers, genX, genY or Millennials and GenZ (McKinsey, 2018). Each of these generations is characterized by specific traits and needs linked to the period they lived in and their past experiences (McKinsey, 2018; Casalegno et al., 2019; Giachino et al., 2019; Forbes, 2019): for this reason many researchers started to analyse attitudes and behaviours of different generational cohorts (Harrington et al., 2012; Chen and Shoemaker, 2014; Kapferer and Denizeau, 2020). GenY and GenZ are the youngest generation but although if Millennials received a lot of attention from scholars and experts (Lama, 2018; Liu et al., 2019; Loureiro & Guerreiro, 2018; Rita et al., 2018; OECD, 2018; Giachino et al., 2019), GenZ has been less analyzed (Robinson & Schanzel, 2019; Skinner et al., 2018; Forbes, 2019).

In the luxury industry, a relevant perspective to consider is the one of the consumer that is highly committed and involved in the purchasing phases of goods and services (Casaburi, 2011): the symbolic dimension and the status symbols that luxury goods and services encompasses influence from a psychological point of view the purchase intention of the consumer. Moreover, considering the product perspective, a number of characteristics are usually associated with luxury products i.e. excellent quality, distinctiveness, craftsmanship, exclusivity and premium prices. But is there any difference between young and old generations in how luxury products are perceived?

In this context, characterized by a fragmented set of generational cohorts and a little known respondence towards luxury, we decided to investigate if there are differences in attitude and behaviours toward luxury between young and old generations. We also investigate how people perceive Moncler, a very well-known luxury brand born in the 50s that, among all, well represents the shifts occurred in the luxury industry and the interception of the changes in consumer behaviour. Moncler, in facts, since its creation has faced the need to change and adapt its concept many times, to face the change in consumer behaviour, in corporate social responsibility or to reposition its brand image.

In order to investigate the point of view of the two groups of generations we made a survey, with closed-ended questions, and we analyse data through a cluster analysis. This allows us to identify four different clusters that put in evidence different level of interest toward luxury, different approach in buying luxury products and a different perception of what luxury products are for people.

This study is a preliminary study that opens to a number of possible future research and with a twofold contribution: from the theory point of view it contributes to shed new lights on the challenges of the luxury companies to fulfill the need of new demand; from the practical point of view it contributes to give new information to the companies and the industry about new trends and relevant aspects for young generations.