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Massification is a strategy that some luxury companies use in order to attain growth in the sales of product. Some luxury brands have taken and used the concept of Massification to allow their brands to grow to accommodate a broader market. As a method of implementing Massification companies created diffusion lines. Diffusion lines are an off shoot of a company or a designers original line that is less expensive in order to reach a broader market and gain a wider consumer base. The strategy of Massification is apart of luxury branding, in which there are both traditional, experimental, and experiential strategies that are implemented. Experiential marketing was first introduced by Pine and Gilmore.

There are both benefits and consequences of the strategies used in Massification. Benefits of Massification can include but are not limited to: Increase in revenue, increased brand recognition, and increased consumer base. Consequences of Massification can include but are not limited to: Brand disengagement, which leads to loss of consumer base and loss of brand loyalty.

Diffusion Lines

Main article: Diffusion line

Some luxury designers and companies will create a Diffusion line to reach a broader consumer audience. A Diffusion line is when a designer will create another separate line of merchandise up for consumption at a lesser price. Diffusion lines have varying ranges and purposes: to increase sales, broaden range of consumers, and increasing demand for product.

Diffusion lines have four stages of market development: wholesale channels to department stores; the creation of ready-to-wear flagships; large diffusion flagships; the opening of stores in provincial cities. An expansion of this level requires a company to obtain more capital, because of this over 60 per cent of all fashion designers are now public limited companies. Diffusion line development, stages 3 and 4, are often franchised to third parties with the designer having control over the product and its brand image. Between 20-30 per cent of gross margin is spent on advertising support to create global campaigns to enhance brand image in foreign markets. Company's have to deal with the tension between the desire to be exclusive and the desire to produce product line extensions and widespread distribution which could lead to the dilution the brand's value.

Brand extensions

Many luxury brands maintain their reputation through Brand extension. A Brand extension is the use of an established brand name to introduce a new product or service. Luxury brands use this strategy in order to reach a larger audience that may not be exposed to these luxury brands.

Serial brands

• America's Next Top Model

The term serial brand has two properties. First, they are episodic, having a desired goal at the end of the season and there is a separation between episodes. Second, their nature both invites consumers to pay renewed attention when a next installment of the brand is released and leads consumers to expect that there will be something new to pay attention to. Serial brands range from movie franchises to book sequels, video game series, sports teams, and fashion collections.

Value of Luxury

Psychological benefits are considered to be the main factor that distinguishes luxury products from nonluxury products.

The definition of luxury is something that is constantly changing. Originally, luxury was a visible result: purposely flashy and showy, defining hereditary social stratification

Currently Millennials are creating an upheaval, this group looks for quality, craftsmanship and authenticity, it is about where the product was made and the products it was made with, not brand names. Millennials are targeted for a category called “functional luxury”, which are brands that provide products that feel less frivolous than fashion, even though they are still pricey. Apple, Whole Foods and Sleep Number mattresses are considered functional luxury brands. One tactic to reach millennials is personalization, in which shoppers receive tailored promotions and see a uniquely-crafted version of a retailer’s Web site. Millennials are also targeted as a part of the category called “HENRY” — an acronym for a person who is a “high-earner not rich yet.”

New words have been invented and promoted for the new definitions of luxury: masstige, opuluxe, premium, ultra-premium, trading up, hyperluxury, and real or true luxury. There is confusion about what really makes a luxury product in today's society

Today luxury brands face an economic crisis. The middle class buyers are disappearing, as well as many wealthy consumers. Even wealthy people who have not been personally affected by the crisis are changing their purchasing habits. They are reducing their consumption, even though they still have the means to buy luxury products and brands. This is a way of symbolically participating in the national struggle and exhibiting solidarity.

Brand Consistency

[The fact is that many luxury brands have become unable to remain profitable in their core business. These luxury brands have increasingly targeted the middle class, and have marketed products that are not luxury products. Their trading down was aimed at leveraging the prestige of the name and seducing irregular buyers who were, in turn, seduced by the ostentatious logo. These excursionists have stopped buying and frivolous consumption has all but gone.]

The weakest brands are those that capitalised on an inherited prestige to sell non-luxury products. Today many of these so-called ‘ luxury brands ’have seen their sales slashed. They thrived on the allure of luxury and seducing a target group that has been called the ‘ excursionist ’ , that is, consumers who were not within the core luxury target market but who bought these accessible items.

Experiential Zones

See also: Engagement marketing

Experiential marketing or Engagement marketing is a strategy with a core concept that the consumer should be involved and engaged in the product and company instead of being a passive bystander. It promotes consumers to be involved in the growth and evolution of the brand.

There are four “experiential zones”: Entertainment, Education, Escapist and Aesthetic.

• Experiences under the entertainment sector are centered around a low customer involvement and interaction. Examples are upscale boutiques, and high end brands opening up restaurants in their stores.
• Experiences under the education sector require more involvement, but still have a low level of intensity. This zone offers a way for the customer to acquire a new skill, or improve an already established skill. The concept referred to as 'edutainment' relates to this experiential zone.
• Experiences under the escapist sector demand both a high involvement and high intensity. Examples of this are evident in the hospitality sector and in private clubs. These experiences allow for consumers to "escape" life or even create new identities.
• Experiences under the aesthetic sector involves a high degree of intensity, but does not require a lot of involvement, such as viewing an art exhibit.

===Experiential Strategies===

The shift towards using experimental strategies is a growing worldwide trend. Experiential marketing is thus about taking the essence of a product and amplifying it into a set of tangible, physical and interactive experiences that reinforce the offer.

Academics have come up with their own strategies for experiential marketing. Smith has come up with a six-step process; One of the first steps is to conduct a survey to see how consumers already view the brand. Then you need to create a brand platform and design a brand experience. Lastly you need to advertise the brand and monitor the performance of the brand. Lippincott Mercer has come up with four principles of experience design. The beginning step is to identify key customer data and feedback. The next step is to figure out your target audience and figure out what will have the greatest impact on consumers. The third step is to turn the findings into project priorities. The final step is to apply the strategy and monitor the purchases. .

The management consultancy, A.T. Kearney developed a 7Cs model to create a high impact digital customer experience –content, customization, customer care, communication, community, connectivity and convenience.

Nueno and Quelch (1998) figured out design and communications, product line, customer service andchannel management as the four keys of managing luxury brands successfully. The author suggested that the luxury brand firms must communicate worldwide its innovative design and thus should extract value in the marketplace.

Kellar (2009) underlines the importance that luxury brands must invoke the brand feelings that are related to customers’ emotional response and reactions towards the brand in their marketing programme. These feelings are very much essential for luxury brands as they act as a central theme in attaching the target audience. The brand feelings are classified into six types. These are: (a) ‘warmth’ feeling, which satisfies consumers’ sentiments and gives them a sense of calm and expresses warm-heartedness; (b) ‘fun’ feeling, which delivers joyous, playful and cheerful experiences to the consumer; (c) ‘excitement’ feeling, which generates energy, a sense of elation and a feel of being alive among the consumers; (d) ‘security’ feeling, which assures consumers of a sense of safety, comfort and a sense of relief when using the brand; (e) ‘social approval’ feeling, which provides consumers with a sense of being acknowledged and ensures favourable acceptance in their social circle; and (f) ‘self-respect’ feeling, which

Brands that lay the foundation on how to market them. This includes maintaining a premium image, which is intangible and aspirational. All the marketing programs of luxury brands must align to ensure product quality and service, pleasure purchase and consumption experiences are delivered. Luxury brand elements can be used as driver for creating brand equity apart from being identified with famous personalities and participating in prestigious events.A luxury brand must carefully control distribution channel, employ a premium pricing strategy, manage brand architecture carefully and must not compete with ordinary brands.

• "Mercedes-Benz has had success courting a younger audience using their “popluxe” marketing concept to sell less expensive lines" [1]

Celebrity Brand Endorsement

Which points to another trend in luxury fashion advertising: The rise of the celebrity model. Last year, Jennifer Lopez appeared in Louis Vuitton ads; Cate Blanchett in Donna Karan; Adrien Brody in Ermenegildo Zegna; Winona Ryder in Marc Jacobs. This season CK Lingerie ads feature Hilary Swank. "There is a glamour and gloss in the way we focus on celebrities and the red-carpet parade that is being shown in these luxury, fashion-brand communications"

Glamour publisher Bill Wackerman attributes the growth in the luxury market to a phenomenon called "mass-tige," a play off the word "prestige," that connotes a democratization of style. He points to Isaac Mizrahi selling his designs at Bergdorf Goodman as well as Target, and Karl Lagerfeld's apparel at Chanel and low-priced retailer H&M, as evidence that the trend is taking place in a "big way.

Celebrity, and in particular athlete, endorsements are big business: Nike alone is thought to have spent around $475 million annually on athlete endorsements as part of its $1.7 billion advertising budget in 2006 (Rovell 2006), but many companies outside the sportsapparel industry are active participants as well. This study finds validation for the use of celebrity endorsers as an advertising strategy: a firm’s decision to enlist an athlete endorser generally has a positive pay-off in brand-level sales – in an absolute sense and relative to the firm’s competitors – and increases the firm’s stock returns.

Brand personality or celebrity endorsement is also considered as the key element of effective advertising (Aaker, 1996). Therefore the most common way to build brand image through personality creation is actually the celebrity endorsement.

Consequences of Massification

Brand Disengagement

Consumers place loyalty and make purchases based on rational and emotional factors. Brand disengagement can occur when a consumer feels that a brand or product has wronged them; this is called a "love becomes hate" effect. Because of this effect the consumer may spread around a negative image about the company to other people.

There are three different elements that destabilize the product that lead to brand disengagement. These process elements are reframing, remixing, and rejecting. Reframing is when a new element is brought into a company and a connection between new and old elements, in an attempt to strengthen the identity of the company, is made. Sometimes this attention between new and old elements can result in positive or negative perceptions of the company as well as much attention in the media. Remixing is when a company will take a product and make it more diverse or different. The consequence of this process is that making a product different from its original intention will deteriorate the products identity. Rejecting occurs when a product or a part of a product is seen as lacking by the consumer. Although this could possibly lead to brand disengagement there is not much of a threat to the identity of the product due to the company having the ability to remake the product.

Our justice-based model asserts that a violation of the fairness norm creates a sense of betrayal among customers, which in turn pressures customers to restore fairness through two basic mechanisms: demanding reparation and retaliating

"Demands for reparation In a service setting, reparation is a positive mechanism for restoring fairness and refers to anything a service firm provides to customers in order to compensate them for the failure and to redress their grievances (cf., Walster et al. 1973). Reparation includes initiatives whereby firms exchange or repair a defective product, offer a discount or reimbursement, apologize, or respond in a timely fashion (Bowen et al. 1999; Smith et al. 1999). In this research, the higher-order construct demands for reparation incorporates two specific behaviors. The most direct way for customers to demand reparation is through problem-solving complaining to a firm, which constitutes a customer’s effort to contact a firm in order to find a solution to their problem (Hibbard et al. 2001). In this case, customers can voice their concerns to a firm and ask for reparation. In difficult situations when discussions with a firm appear to fail, customers can seek assistance from a third-party organization. Specifically, third-party complaining for dispute resolution is defined as a customer’s effort to consult a consumer agency or legal counsel to gain assistance in reaching a settlement with a firm. Most consumer agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, provide such help at no cost"

Retaliatory behaviors As noted earlier, customer retaliation represents the efforts made by customers to punish and cause inconvenience to a firm for the damages it caused 248 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2008) 36:247–261 them. In contrast to reparation, whereby customers seek to improve their own situations by receiving something, retaliation is motivated by a desire to “bring down” a firm in some fashion (Walster et al. 1973). Where reparation is fundamentally corrective, retaliation is punitive in essence. In this research, the higher-order construct retaliatory behaviors refers to the three following behaviors. Retaliation can be direct and takes the form of vindictive complaining, when customers contact a firm to inconvenience and abuse its employees (Hibbard et al. 2001). Other types of direct retaliation exist such as physical aggression, stealing, and vandalism. However, we do not examine these forms here because they are illegal and only infrequently used by customers (Huefner et al. 2002). Spreading negative word-of-mouth (i.e., a customer’s efforts to denigrate a firm to their family and acquaintances) can be viewed as an indirect form of retaliation (Wangenheim 2005). By sharing their bad experiences with others, customers hope to tarnish a firm’s reputation and to encourage others to avoid patronizing it. Customers can also indirectly retaliate by contacting a third-party organization (i.e., an agency, the media, or a complaint website) to publicize their failure to a vast audience, a behavior named third-party complaining for publicity

In this research, perceived betrayal is defined as a customer’s belief that a firm has intentionally violated what is normative in the context of their relationship.

Model asserts that the violation of this norm leads to betrayal. Consistent with the recovery literature, fairness judgments are conceptualized in three dimensions. Distributive fairness refers to the outcomes or the compensation received by a customer at the recovery stage. In turn, customers evaluate the recovery process by making judgments about procedural fairness (i.e., the procedures, policies, and methods used by a firm to address a customer’s complaint) and interactional fairness (i.e., the manner in which employees treat customers when the procedures are enacted).

Initial work identified trust (i.e., a customer’s confidence that a firm is dependable and can be relied on) and relationship satisfaction (i.e., a customer’s affective state resulting from the evaluation of all aspects of a relationship over time) as the key constructs that capture the quality of a relationship.

The “love becomes hate” effect implies that, as relationship quality increases, customers experience a greater sense of betrayal when they perceive low levels of fairness related to both the outcomes and the process

References

• Mortelmans, Dimitri. "Measuring The Luxurious In Advertisements: On The Popularization Of The Luxury Perfume Market." Semiotica 2014.199 (2014): 193-217. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.

• Case, Tony. "Mass Market." Mediaweek 14.31 (2004): 14-16. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.

• http://www.forbes.com/sites/robinlewis/2014/03/25/the-great-retail-demassification-part-2/

Footnotes

• possible research

Past research focused on luxury brand types (e.g., Andrus, Silver, & Johnson, 1986; Dubois & Duquesne, 1993), the consumption behaviors of affluent consumers (e.g., Hirschman, 1988; Stanley, 1988; Veblen, 1899), the determinants of the acquisition of luxury products (e.g., Dubois & Duquesne, 1993; Dubois & Laurent, 1993; Mason, 1992), the cross-cultural comparison of attitudes toward the concept of luxury (Dubois & Laurent, 1996; Dubois & Paternault, 1997), and the comparison of motivations between Asian and Western societies (Wang & Waller, 2006; Wong & Ahuvia, 1998).

Phau, Ian, and Edith Cheong. "How Young Adult Consumers Evaluate Diffusion Brands: Effects Of Brand Loyalty And Status Consumption." Journal Of International Consumer Marketing 21.2 (2009): 109-123. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.