Luxury: Timeless or temporary? What do generations tell about luxury products?

Radka Šimková

Diplomová práce

Abstract:

Perception of luxury products differs among consumers. Theory suggests that external events may influence luxury products perception, because these events have impact on consumers´ values. According to the external events happening in formative age people can be grouped into generations. Three post-war generations, Baby Boomers, the generation X and the generation Y are the subject of this research.Luxury products are defined by eleven attributes (status symbolism, value expressive attribute, hedonic attribute, excellent quality, beauty and aesthetics, excellent performance, expensiveness, scarcity, uniqueness, distance and superfluousness) grouped into three dimensions according to its salience for each generation. Following hypotheses are then proposed: expensiveness attribute is more salient for the generation X than for Baby Boomers and the generation Y, beauty and aesthetics are more salient attributes for Baby Boomers than for the generation X and the generation Y and status symbolic attribute is more salient for the generation Y than for the generation X and Baby Boomers.Multivariate statistics, descriptive statistics, repeated measures ANOVA and one-way ANOVA is used to analyse data from 190 respondents from the Czech Republic. It is shown that some attributes are more related to luxury products than others and there are two significant differences between generations on the attribute level. Beauty and aesthetics is significantly less salient for Baby Boomers than for the generation X and scarcity attribute is less salient for the generation Y than for Baby Boomers. The main effect of generation on the perception of luxury products is eliminated due to the data centering. Its purpose is the ability to test the individual hypotheses. It is concluded that there are minor differences between generations in the perception of luxury in general, but there is a big gap in scientific literature concerning the relation between generations and luxury products.

Keywords

Baby Boomers, data centering, external events, generation X, generation Y, luxury product perception, one-way ANOVA, attributes of luxury products, regression analysis, repeated measure ANOVA, semantic differential scale, values

Jazyk práce: angličtina

Datum vytvoření / odevzdání či podání práce: 30. 3. 2016

Obhajoba závěrečné práce

• Vedoucí: prof. Ing. Ivana Tichá, Ph.D.

Česká zemědělská univerzita v Praze

Provozně ekonomická fakulta

Magisterský studijní program / obor:
Economics and Management / European Agrarian Diplomacy