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Investigating on Characteristics of Luxury; Clustering of Iranian Society According to Perceived Characteristics of Luxury Goods Through Theoretical Dimensions and Empirical Study

Makarem, Mohammad | 2021

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 54682 (44)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Management and Economics
  6. Advisor(s): Karami, Nasser
  7. Abstract:
  8. Due to the fast speed of changes in sciences and living conditions, concepts undergo a transformation as time goes by. Accordingly, the academic updating of such concepts in a way that is in line with the immediate perceptions of society seems necessary. The concept of luxury goods has changed a lot since old times. To understand how society perceives luxury goods, the current study aimed to make a thorough review of the past studies and investigate the characteristics of luxury goods. Then, the extracted characterizes were investigated on 355 participants by distributing questionnaires randomly. While selecting the characteristics, more emphasis was put on their innateness and the possibility to produce and execute them by the practitioners of the field. Thus, the current study not only contributed to discovering an updated concept of luxury goods but from a managerial perspective it facilitated the first step of entering the luxury market (i.e., attaining a better understanding of society and the required strategies to offer goods that are in line with the understanding of societies). Finally, people were clustered according to their type of perception so that a better understanding can be gained of what the audience thinks about luxury goods. The characteristics of luxury goods according to the Iranian society and their degree of importance were identified. In addition, it was descriptively recognized that the perception of society towards luxury goods (except for the characteristics that are considered inseparable from the product) is to a large extent independent of the goods themselves. On the other hand, investigating the impact of prices on the perception of society concerning luxury goods showed that 21% of people do not consider a high price as necessarily a characteristic of luxury goods, and 36% view a high (and a very high) price as the main characteristic of luxury goods (confirming the principle of democratization). However, the majority of people still had the traditional view towards luxury goods (i.e., being very expensive and unreachable). Then, the effects of price and the rate of purchase on the perceptual characteristics were descriptively identified. Finally, clustering showed that the society can be divided into 4 groups in terms of viewing luxury goods: 1. the traditional group that mostly pursues financial and social perceptual values, 2. the visual-concrete group that pays attention mainly to the individual perceptual values that are physical and concrete and is highly sensitive to the aesthetic dimensions and the material used to produce the goods, 3. The democratic (modern) group that focuses on practical perceptual values and are highly sensitive to features like performance and innovation and a little sensitivity to the features of the visual-concrete group, and 4. The artistic-symbolic group is highly sensitive to features such as being artistic, history, and fame that create social perceptual values. The latter group shows a degree of sensitivity to the features of the traditional group like price and being rare. In addition, it shows very little sensitivity to and a significant difference with the features of the democratic and visual-concrete groups. In the current study, the clusters were formed according to the closeness of people’s perceptions and not according to the similarity of the related features. However, the characteristics of each cluster almost independently express a concept of the perceptual values (financial, social, individual, practical) of luxury goods. In addition, it was observed that luxury goods according to the traditional and artistic-symbolic groups are those that influence others or become distinguished (and not the ones that meet innate needs). On the other hand, it can be argued that the democratic and visual-concrete groups perceive luxury goods as not the ones that meet innate needs but the ones that are used for extravagance and indulgence
  9. Keywords:
  10. Democratization ; Perception ; Clustering ; Luxury Goods ; Luxury Characteristics ; New Luxury ; Old Luxury

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