Examining the impact of behavioural factors towards luxury brands purchase decision- An ISM analysis of the critical factors

Abstract

Many researchers’ world over has developed many models and theories to understand the buying decisions towards luxury brands. Contrary to the law of demand, luxury buying has always defied pure economics where the price and demand are inversely related. As part of conspicuous consumption, many behavioral factors like emotions, impulse reaction, social affiliation, cultural underpinnings, etc. play a critical role in impacting the final decision making of the luxury consumers. Researchers like Veblen (1992) laid emphasis on status seeking attitude of people to have a more critical impact while other researches have emphasized upon hedonic pleasure obtained by luxury buying as being the most important factor. But as generations have passed to include more of millennials and aspirational consumers in the category of luxury buyers, research on other behavioral factors have also become very important for the managers to develop future marketing strategies. The paper would examine the combination of all such factors that impact the current generation of luxury buyers who are a mix of both affective and neural factors without them knowing the same. Efforts would also be made to examine the factors governing the impulse decisions for luxury and how it is developed in the mind of the consumers. The implications of the research would help the luxury marketers to better understand the consumer decision making process and buying factors while developing the marketing strategy elements and positioning approaches.