Elderly consumers and financial choices: A systematic review

The purpose of this paper is to investigate elderly choices and behaviors in financial services markets. A systematic review of a five-decade period (1970–2019) of academic research in the marketing field was carried out in order to identify elderly consumers’ decisions regarding financial asset management and legacy, highlighting the main findings of extant research and practical implications for marketers. Results shed light on financial asset management in terms of welfare, retirement planning, and investments for old age, as well as legacy practices in terms of special possessions, charities, and rites of passage. The study underlines the need to consider the heterogeneous nature of elderly consumers’ values and lifestyles in designing strategies for financial services and products, emphasizing that demographic differences alone are not adequate to effectively define market segments. Furthermore, the role of mixed marketing approaches considering elderly choices are discussed, together with implications for companies that want to target such consumer target

Luxury Purchasing among Older Consumers: Exploring Inferences about Cognitive Age, Status, and Style Motivations

This research deals with the possibility that luxury purchasing among older consumers is related to their cognitive age (i.e., the age they feel) and, accordingly, the study reported herein assesses the effects of the underlying luxury motives on cognitive age. Results show that older consumers who relate luxury goods purchasing mainly to status reasons tend to feel younger than those who consider luxury goods purchasing primarily as a means to express their individual style. Furthermore, the study finds that, in order to meet their needs and wants, older consumers with a lower cognitive age rely more on brands than specific products; so their luxury goods purchasing intention is influenced more by brand images than product characteristics. These findings have marketing implications in the context of planning ad hoc advertising strategies aimed at luxury selling to older consumers

The atypicality of sustainable luxury products

This study tackles the issue of how consumers might perceive luxury products' sustainability\u2010focused communication. We compare consumers' reactions when luxury brands communicate their focus on either product sustainability or product excellence (i.e., a sustainability\u2010 vs. excellence\u2010focused communication strategy, respectively). We predict that consumers perceive the former as more atypical for a luxury brand, which renders the communication more effective at enhancing consumers' willingness to buy the brand's products. Across six experiments, we demonstrate that perceived atypicality mediates the effect of luxury product communication strategy on consumers' willingness to buy; that perceived atypicality increases willingness to buy by increasing consumers' perception about the uniqueness of the communication strategy; that the effect of perceived atypicality is stronger for consumers with a higher chronic need for uniqueness; and that the greater effectiveness of a sustainability\u2010focused communication strategy on atypicality and willingness to buy is peculiar to luxury products (i.e., it does not manifest for mass\u2010market products). From a managerial perspective, our findings demonstrate that luxury brands may innovate their communication strategies by leveraging sustainability rather than product excellence

aiWOM: Artificial Intelligence Word-of-Mouth. Conceptualizing Consumer-to-AI Communication

The advent of innovative technologies with installed artificial intelligence (AI) has raised the need to understand evolutive consumers’ behaviours. The dyadic communicative experience between consumers and technological artifacts with programmed social humanoid features shed the light on the emergence of an adaptative form of word-of-mouth (WOM) and that we label as “AI word- of-mouth” (aiWOM). We argue that there is a need for defining and investigating aiWOM as an emerging phenomenon which derive but diverge from WOM. Our conceptualization suggests that the communication interaction between consumers and AI technologies produce new consumers’ behaviors and psychological reactions.© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

New technologies in luxury consumption experiences: The role of individual differences

Technology represents a relevant challenge for today’s luxury brands. However, although new technologies like smart objects might be useful to improve luxury consumption experiences, their effectiveness from a consumer perspective is still unexplored. In particular, no studies have to date investigated the role of status consumption into the acceptance of new technologies in luxury settings. To fill this gap, two experiments have been conducted to investigate the perceived usefulness of Voice Assistants (VAs) in the contexts of luxury hotels and luxury yachts. The experiments examined the interactive effect of consumers’ openness to technological innovation - operationalized as either consumer’s risk propensity or openness to change - and status consumption orientation on perceived usefulness of VAs. Results showed that openness to technological innovation exerted a positive effect on perceived usefulness, yet this effect decreases in magnitude when consumers have a greater status consumption orientation. Relevant managerial implications for luxury marketers interested in implementing new technologies are discussed

The importance of dream in advertising: luxury versus mass market

Luxury companies typically follow managerial approaches that differ from those of mass market companies and, in particular, their marketing strategies are based on opposite tactics. For instance, luxury companies commonly use imagery rather than text in their print advertising as a way of allowing customers to assign their own personal meanings to the message, thus fulfilling their desire to dream. Indeed, in this current era of information proliferation, today\u2019s consumers are increasingly less willing to process advertising information they receive as text. In this study we explore luxury communication by analyzing some luxury brands\u2019 print advertisement and showing how luxury companies mainly communicate through images instead of text, thus creating appealing advertisements. On the basis of those results and some literature insights, we formulate some managerial propositions that mass market companies may use to start developing dream-evoking communication in order to appeal to modern consumers. In particular, we present mass market managers with suggestions about how to employ the luxury model to make their communications more aspirational than rational through imagery rather than text

Consumer reactions to unsustainable luxury: a cross-country analysis

Purpose – This paper investigates why and when messages regarding unsustainable luxury products lead to negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) through a focus on the role of guilt, need to warn others and consumers’ cultural orientation. Design/methodology/approach – Three experiments test whether messages describing unsustainable versus sustainable luxury manufacturing processes elicit guilt and a need to warn others and whether and how the need to warn others affects consumers’ NWOM depending on their cultural orientation. Findings – Consumers experience guilt in response to messages emphasizing the unsustainable (vs sustainable) nature of luxury products. In turn, guilt triggers a need to warn other consumers, which leads to NWOM about the luxury company. Furthermore, the results suggest that two dimensions of Hofstede’s model of national culture – namely individualism/collectivismand masculinity/femininity – moderate the effect of the need to warn others on NWOM. Practical implications – Luxury managers should design appropriate strategies to cope with consumers’ different reactions to information regarding luxury brands’ unsustainability. Managers should be aware that the risk of NWOM diffusion may be higher in countries characterized by a collectivistic and feminine orientation rather than an individualistic and masculine orientation. Originality/value – Consumer reaction to unsustainable luxury, especially across different cultural groups, is a neglected area of investigation. This work contributes to this novel area of research by investigatingNWOM stemming from unsustainable luxury manufacturing practices in different cultural contexts