because a strong brand enhances the marketing strategy while a weak brand
suppresses it.
The luxury fashion marketing strategy comprises of the branding mix as its
main component which will be tagged here as ‘The Six Ps of Luxury
Branding’. The branding mix are recognized marketing elements that drive the
branding process forward. Like the famous Four Ps of the marketing mix, the
Six Ps is a tool that propels the marketing and branding strategies of luxury
brands in the direction of market success. The Six Ps are the following:
1 The Product
2 The Pricing
3 The Place of Distribution
4 The Promotion
5 The People
6 The Positioning
The product
A product is everything a consumer receives from a company in exchange for
a cost. These include physical goods and services. A product has two dimen-
sions: the tangible features that we can see, touch, smell, hear or taste; and the
intangible features that we feel and experience. Using this brief definition, it
is clear that the luxury goods sector is highly product specific. The meticu-
lously crafted luxury goods that consumers purchase are tangible objects to
treasure, while the intangible benefits constitute of the brand dimensions, the
retail atmosphere, the customer services and the guarantees.
Products are designed to satisfy consumer needs. These needs could be
functional such as the need for a pair of glasses to aid eyesight; or the needs
could have intangible dimensions such as the need to wear a pair of glasses
with the Prada logo, in order to make a statement of status to oneself and to
others. The first level of need satisfaction can be found among the categories
of goods that serve purely practical purposes such as consumer goods; while
the second level of need satisfaction is found among products that have very
strong branding concepts such as luxury goods. This is because luxury prod-
ucts provide much more than functional benefits to consumers. They are
products that consumers use to project an image of themselves to the public
as an expression of their true selves or their ideal selves. They are status
symbol tools that show prestige, good taste and affluence. These factors indi-
cate a symbolic role linked to the emotional, social and psychological bene-
fits that are derived from purchasing and using luxury products. As a
consequence, strategies behind the development of luxury products place a
strong emphasis on branding elements. This is because luxury goods are eval-
uated by consumers on an abstract level with a focus on non-product-related
chapter 5 129the art of creating and managing luxury fashion brands