Measuring Consumers' Attitudes to Luxury

Since the 90 s, there has been an increasing interest in the concept of luxury and luxury brand management. In this paper we focus on attitudes towards the concept of luxury and aim to identify the limitations of the extant measure proposed by Dubois & Laurent (1994). Our focus on a generalised attitudinal measure is particularly relevant given the significance of attitudes and perceptions in forming brand equity, and its role in the consumers purchase decisions. Using a panel of expert judges we reviewed the validity of the measure. We then considered the reliability by reviewing other studies and subsequently performed our own reliability checks using a small study (n=139) of Australian business students. Our analysis highlights concerns with the validity and reliability of the scale initially developed by Dubois & Laurent (1994). Thus, we advocate a complete revision of the measure following Rossiter s scale development procedure C-OAR-SE (2002). The paper concludes with a proposed framework to be further tested using Rossiter s (2002) approach