Abstract—The global luxury market reached €1.17 trillion in
sales in 2018 and the global market for personal luxury goods is
forecast to grow to €290 billion by 2020. Close to 70% of the
global personal luxury goods sales are tribute by Generations X
and Y. When considering the fact that Generation X is the
smaller consumer segment based on a population size,
compared to baby boomers or generation Y, Gen X segment’s
total expenditure on personal luxury goods, which was greater
than that of either of generational cohorts is highly noteworthy.
A recent study by Kim (2019) found that both generations X
and Y are much heavily involved in luxury goods consumption
through the ownership of multiple product categories including
clothing, shoes, handbags and small leather goods, and jewelry,
compared to older and younger baby boomers. Regarding
personal luxury consumption at different price points such as
absolute luxury vs. accessible luxury has not received much
attention. Thus, this study aims to provide insights by
investigating US affluent Generations X and Y consumers’
perception and lifestyle variables and their predictability of
behavioral variables in the personal luxury marketplace. Using
a nationwide representative sampling and online survey, a final
sample of 299 responses were collected and used for this study.
The confirmatory factor analysis of the measurement more as
well as proposed conceptual model revealed that data fit the
proposed conceptual model well. All, except one, research
hypotheses received statistical support. A structural equation
modeling using multiple group analysis revealed that absolute
luxury owners are significantly different from accessible luxury
owners. Based on the findings, pragmatic implications and
future research directions are provided.
Index Terms—Luxury, loyalty, perceived values,
consumption.
J. Kim is with The Shannon Rogers and Jerry Silverman School of
Fashion Design and Merchandising, College of the Arts, Kent State
University, Kent, OH 44242-0001, USA (e-mail: jkim55@kent.edu).
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Cite: Jihyun Kim, "A Multiple Group Analysis of Absolute versus Accessible Personal Luxury Goods Consumption Behavior among Generations X and Y in the US," International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance vol.11, no.6, pp. 141-149, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).