Stefania Masè

Louis Vuitton’s Art-based Strategy to Communicate Exclusivity and Prestige

The recent global luxury industry has transformed from a constellation of small and medium-sized enterprises to a few large luxury conglomerates. This new structure, along with growing foreign markets such as Asia, has caused an increase in sales volumes, resulting in production that is more industrial than handcrafted. These changes decrease exclusiveness for luxury brands, which may lead to commoditization of the luxury brands in consumers’ eyes.

Repetto, a Paris-Based Craft Enterprise Growing into a Global Brand: Design-Driven Innovation and Meaning Strategy

Product innovation is not limited to technology-push and market-pull strategies but includes design-driven innovation. This form of innovation must be associated with the meaning conveyed by the brand and its corporate business model. We describe such a connection between design-driven innovation and meaning strategy as exemplified by French, Paris-based upscale shoe brand Repetto. Our study starts with the historical development of the company, an overview on its core market (dance shoes and equipment), then moves on to Repetto design innovations for professional dance shoes and everyday dance-inspired products. CEO Jean-Marc Gaucher strengthened the company’s dance-based expertise by structuring Repetto’s whole business model around dance-world meaning and aesthetics. He has thus revived a declining enterprise in the 1990s with fresh inspiration, meaning and energy. Superb communication and large investments in their stores revitalized Repetto which promoted a series of stylish capsule collections signed by renowned designers and artists. The resurgent French brand renewed its business model and has obtained consumer recognition in the high-end premium segment. Repetto has secured a niche in the upscale sportswear market based on their recognition for long-standing expertise in dancewear. They have extended their collections into urban wear and expanded into international markets. The chapter devoted to this French brand shows their endeavor to move from premium into luxury. It ends with managerial implications.

The Prada Trend: Brand Building at the Intersection of Design, Art, Technology, and Retail Experience

Prada is one of the most successful Italian fashion businesses with unique design aesthetics and provocative counter-mainstream spirit. It is also one of a few companies in the global luxury industry that have chosen to remain independent from mergers with multinational conglomerates, establishing and following its own strategy based on distinction and management coherence. The Prada case is an exemplary depiction of how global recognition of a luxury brand stems from a combination of a constant search for differentiation and shrewd business decisions ensuring efficiency, functionality, and resistance through time. Direct control over retail, well-delineated and uniform brand portfolio with quest for aesthetic and cultural relevance, transcendence of pure commerce to the world of art, technology, architecture, and focus on consumer dialogue through retail experience—all these elements help Prada become one of the most ambitious and trendsetting global luxury brands of modern days.

IS THE ARTIFICATION PROCESS PERCEIVED BY FINAL CONSUMERS OF LUXURY PRODUCTS? RESULTS FROM AN EXPERIMENT BASED ON THE APPLICATION OF THE CUSTOMERBASED BRAND EQUITY MODEL

Recent research has shown that many companies in the fashion industry are increasingly weaving close relationships with the art world, to appropriate art values and meanings to be associated with their own products and brands (Hagdtvedt & Patrick, 2008a; 2008b). Businesses related to the fashion luxury sector have been especially prone to using such strategies to transform their products into true artworks to address the issue of commodification resulting from high production volumes (Dion and Arnoult, 2011; Riot, Chameret & Rigaud, 2013). Over the past two decades, the luxury market has undergone huge structural changes through mergers and acquisitions that have transformed an industry made up of small, family businesses into major financial conglomerates and brand owners (Roux & Floch, 1996; Crane 2012). Secondly, globalization and openness to new fast-growing markets such as Asia, have led these luxury conglomerates to increase sales volumes, failing in one of the basic characteristics of such goods: rarity. But if the real rarity of luxury products is a promise that companies can no longer guarantee their own consumers, the elitism of these products can be ensured through an artificial rarity. Jean-Noël Kapferer used the neologism artification recently introduced by French sociologists Nathalie Heinich and Roberta Shapiro and applied it to the analysis of luxury goods (Kapferer, 2012; 2014; Heinich and Shapiro, 2012; Shapiro and Heinich, 2012). He stressed that a strategy based on art implemented by luxury companies is useful mainly to support the perception of rarity by the final consumer. Artification is based on the notion that art – related objects or persons are associated with positive values. Enhancing a corporate image in the consumer’s mind means building positive ties to the brand that will initiate a form of benevolence towards the brand, providing the legitimization of corporate actions and, in some cases, resulting in the purchase of goods and services produced and distributed by the company (Keller, 1993; Aaker, 1996; Aaker & Joachimsthaler, 2000; Keller, 2003). We decided to analyse the effect of Artification on brand value by focusing on the four dimensions of Awareness, Image, Quality and Loyalty by using the same CbBE (Customer-based Brand Equity) structure previous authors tested on country of origin effect on consumers, based on the main hypotheses further explained (Pappu, Quester & Cooksey, 2006). The first hypothesis relates to the dimension of Awareness and aims to test the level of brand recognition in final consumers when the logo is modified by an artist. 1 elena.cedrola@unimc.it 2 genevieve.cohen-cheminet@paris-sorbonne.fr 3 stefania.mase@univ-pau.fr

La vocazione territoriale tra approccio sistemico e situazionista: analisi di una collaborazione culture driven tra aziende del made in Italy attraverso il caso del Contratto di Rete Polo Alta Moda Area Vestina / The territorial vocation between the “systemic” approach and the “situationist” approach: analysis of a culture-driven collaboration between Made-in-Italy firms. The case of the network contract of “Polo Alta Moda Area Vestina

Il presente lavoro si propone di mostrare come una collaborazione culture driven tra aziende del made in Italy possa innescare un processo virtuoso capace di alimentare la competitivita d’impresa. Nello specifi co, intende verifi care la validita di una nuova chiave di lettura dei processi di governance del territorio, detta situazionista, che affi anca la concezione prevalente in letteratura, defi nita unitaria o sistemica. Il punto di discrepanza principale tra