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Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods -- and How Companies Create Them by Robert Morris

Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods -- and How Companies Create Them Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske Portfolio/The Penguin Group

This is a revised and updated edition of the highly-praised and award-winning bestseller which first appeared in October of 2003. Obviously, Silverstein and Fiske have since learned a great deal from responses to their analysis of "New Luxury": a rapidly developing socio-economic trend as America's middle-market consumers are trading up to "products and services which possess higher levels of quality, taste, and [key word] aspiration than [other] goods in the [same] category but are not so expensive as to be out of reach...[trading up to products and services which] sell at much higher prices than conventional goods and in much higher volumes than traditional luxury goods and, as a result, have soared into previously uncharted territory high above the familiar price-volume demand curve." The significance of this paradigm shift continues to have profound implications for literally anyone who competes each day for consumers' attention, consideration, and (most important of all) business. Hence the importance of this revised and updated edition. For decision-makers in most local chambers which do not offer luxury products and services, the challenge is to convince prospects (e.g. for membership, sponsorships, and for placement of advertising) that the total value far exceeds the given cost. (As indicated in another review, I agree with Warren Buffett that cost is what is charged but value is what a buyer think it¹s worth.) For example, many people will join a local chamber to ³trade up² IF they perceive that, by doing so, they will then have access to better as well as more extensive networks of business contacts. In this instance, prestige and luxury are synonymous.