Trading Up - The New American Luxury

[David]

Okay so you've got a million dollar company, big deal, why not aim for a hundred million dollar, or possibly billion dollar company?

THE BLURB:

Why do people happily pay $6 for a Panera Panini instead of $3 for a sandwich at the deli?

Or $28 for a Victoria’s Secret bra instead of $12 for a generic brand?

Or $30,000 for a BMW instead of $20,000 for a Chevy?

Trading up has become a fact of life.

These purchases reflect an important worldwide behavioural shift.
Consumers today are willing to pay a significant premium for goods and
services that are emotionally important to them and that deliver the
perceived values of quality, performance, and engagement. But in other
categories that aren’t emotionally important, they become bargain
hunters: a passionate Mercedes driver will shop at Target every
weekend; a construction worker who splurges on a $3,000 set of Callaway
golf clubs will also buy store-brand groceries. What are the financial
and emotional pressures and social forces that
drive product choices? What are the benefits that qualify a
premium-price product or service for mass acceptance? And how can an
established producer create a successful mass luxury brand?" In Trading
Up, a world-class team of consultants explores these questions and
shows how companies create premium brands that appeal to the
mass-market consumer. The book is teeming with ideas that are relevant
to product developers, business strategists, marketers, and social
critics as well as consumers themselves.



This book is a hard one for me to review as it is terribly written and
becomes somewhat repetitive. The same 9 brands are used so
repetitively as examples, I almost developed an unconscious dislike
toward them. The content for me however was compelling and has
encouraged me to scrutinise my brand concept and products. This is
really all you need to read:

New Luxury leaders and their companies follow a set of management practices that are different from those of conventional or Old Luxury goods creators. Using them, New Luxury companies have shattered
conventional beliefs in nearly all aspects of product creation and
distribution, including ideas about price ceilings, price ranges, brand
extendibility, consumer sophistication, market stability, and the
innovation cascade.

1. Never underestimate the customer.

2. Shatter the price-volume demand curve.

3. Create a ladder of genuine benefits.

4. Escalate innovation, elevate quality, and deliver a flawless experience.

5. Extend the price range and positioning of the brand.

6. Customize your value chain to deliver on the benefit ladder.

7. Use influence marketing; seed your success through brand apostles.

8. Continually attack the category like an outsider.

So like I said it's a tough one to review, saying that I would still recommend it to you highly. I think the potential implications are huge and surpasses the laughable style it has been written in. I'm gonna have to introduce the first use of 'half a star' however sad that may be, I'm sorry:  4.5 stars. Oh also, it was written in 2003 and it now has a new edition

[jacqueline]

WOW! now that is a review...i am curious to see how BAD it is :)
i think it will be a 'borrow from the library job' rather then buy it myself

thanks for adding this

:)