Less is more: A theory of minimalist luxury

IF 1.2 4区 管理学 Q3 ECONOMICS Journal of Economics & Management Strategy Pub Date : 2023-09-24 DOI:10.1111/jems.12558
Z. Jessie Liu, Pinar Yildirim, Z. John Zhang
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Abstract

We show theoretically that when high-quality, low-price counterfeits exist and are visibly indistinguishable from authentic products, the status-seeking wealthy may embrace a “less is more” purchasing strategy or what we refer to as the minimalist luxury strategy, to signal their status. These are the wealthy who have a high disutility of shopping for counterfeits. Specifically, in our model, only buyers know the authenticity of their own purchases. Because of this information asymmetry, these wealthy buyers may purposefully restrain from consuming luxury goods as a sacrifice of functional utility to stand out, a signaling strategy that the rest are not willing to mimic. Thus, “less” functional utility allows those status-seeking wealthy to enjoy “more” symbolic utility that the society bestows on their perceived status. This minimalist luxury strategy is in sharp contrast to Veblen's conspicuous consumption strategy, as well as to the maximalist luxury strategy proposed by Liu et al. We derive this minimalist luxury equilibrium, discuss how signaling in our context can differ from that of Veblen and Liu et al., and explore its managerial implications for the luxury goods industry.

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少即是多:一种极简奢华的理论
我们从理论上表明,当高质量、低价格的仿冒品存在,并且与正品无法明显区分时,追求地位的富人可能会采用“少即是多”的购买策略,或者我们称之为极简主义奢侈品策略,以表明他们的地位。这些富人对购买假冒产品有很高的负效用。具体来说,在我们的模型中,只有买家知道自己购买的商品的真实性。由于这种信息不对称,这些富有的买家可能会有意识地克制自己不去消费奢侈品,以牺牲功能效用来脱颖而出,这是一种其他人不愿意模仿的信号策略。因此,“较少的”功能性效用使那些追求地位的富人能够享受社会赋予他们感知到的地位的“更多的”象征性效用。这种极简主义奢侈品策略与Veblen的炫耀性消费策略以及Liu等人提出的极致主义奢侈品策略形成鲜明对比。我们推导了这种极简奢侈品均衡,讨论了在我们的背景下信号如何与Veblen和Liu等人的不同,并探讨了其对奢侈品行业的管理意义。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.20
自引率
5.30%
发文量
43
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