Special Session: Investigating Pre-Loved Luxury Brand Consumption: An Abstract

Abstract

Industry data estimates that the global pre-loved luxury brand market was worth $149 billion in 2018, accounting for 24% of luxury sales (Ryding et al. 2017). The increased prevalence of this market necessitates investigation into the motivations of this brand consumption phenomena. The concept of pre-loved luxury brands is ambiguous within the research to date, and includes pre-owned second-hand goods, vintage items and collectors’ pieces. Markets and platforms for circulating pre-loved luxury brands are varied, examples include professional sales websites, auctions and traditional second-hand retailers (Cervellon et al. 2012; Zhan and He 2012), which indicates that pre-loved luxury brand consumption takes various forms (Turunen and Leskinen 2015).

Noticing the market expansion, pre-loved luxury brands could facilitate closer consumer-brand relationships than with new luxury. The sale of pre-loved luxury brands helps to extend the lifecycle of brands and construct new meanings and personalities to enhance consumers’ luxury experiences (Turunen and Leskinen 2015). To better understand the challenges and strategic opportunities in the pre-loved luxury market, luxury brand marketers need to understand the underlying reasons driving consumers’ appetite of pre-loved luxury brands.

Prior research has discussed consumer motivations and purchase intentions in the context of second-hand consumption (Guiot and Roux 2010) and luxury consumption (Hung et al. 2011; Hudders and Pandelaere 2012). The literature suggests a positive relationship between the concept of sustainable consumption and second-hand consumption (Guiot and Roux 2010) but a negative relationship with luxury consumption (Achabou and Dekhili 2013). With regards to luxury consumption, status consumption has been examined as the prominent factor that drives consumers to consume luxury brands (Hennigs et al. 2017). However, when specific luxury brands are obtained through second-hand consumption, it remains unclear as to what types of alternative luxury experiences could be generated to satisfy consumers’ status-signaling demands. Research also emphasise the significance of consumers’ strong positive emotions to motivate them to seek ownership of loved brands from the second-hand market (Guiot and Roux 2010). However, it remains unclear whether consumers’ love emotion drives their purchase intention of pre-loved luxury brands (Turunen and Leskinen 2015).

Thus, it is necessary to re-examine the influence of the prominent motivators of second-hand consumption and new luxury brand consumption on consumers’ purchase intentions towards various forms of pre-loved luxury brands and further explore the existence of new motivations. This research aims to provide insight into consumers’ pre-loved luxury brand consumption behaviours, with a focus on determining the motivation of consumers’ purchase intentions. Using a multi-method approach, this research investigates consumer-brand relationship within this luxury re-sale market, whilst providing conceptual clarity to the ‘pre-loved’ luxury brand.