Luxury Brand

The question today of what makes a luxury brand and how do we distinguish it is very hard to answer. The standard business response is to say they are more exclusive. And we get this exclusivity by having high prices and relatively small amounts of the product available. The reality, however, of luxury brands is that they are sold in their millions, and in some cases, are not priced that much higher than the standard output. So the only way I can really answer your question is to say it is all relative. As you said in your introduction, it wasn't that long ago in Australia that we would have considered two televisions to be a luxury, or even further back, one color television. And you can make a strong argument, for example, that Starbucks in China, right now, is a luxury purchase because of its cost, because of how frequently it is purchased by many people. So, I think the long answer is a complicated one, but the answer is it depends on whom you talk to. I think in the business community, what we would say is that there is a small cluster of more expensive brands which have a distinct strategy that we would identify as being luxury brands. And they start with the Rolls Royce and the Tiffanys and the Louis Vuittons of the world. And, l think that tends to be how we see them.