American Marketing Association

Luxury Brand Community Forums: a Look inside the Buyer’s Mind

August 3rd, 2008 | Author: Beth Harte

In the July/August issue of the AMA’s Marketing Management magazine there is an interesting article, “Wooing Luxury Customers,” by Suzanne Hader (Principal, 400twin). Suzanne covers a lot of great points such as what is luxury, what defines wealth, and what shapes luxury habits and how luxury brand customers look for a rich, emotional experience and great service rather than being ‘sold’ to.Not being a luxury brand marketer, I went on the hunt for other articles about luxury brand marketing and came across a few older items such as an article in Chief Marketer, a keynote on Luxury Branding Marketing and a scholarly article.

In reading all of these pieces, the one thing I consistently noticed is that the luxury brand marketing advice, for the most part, focuses on traditional marketing and branding—talking to the customer and creating an experience for the customer.

The reality is luxury brand customers are building and maintaining their own communities to discuss the brands they are loyal to and the experiences they are having. Here are just a few examples of forums, member counts, threads (topical discussions), and posts (within threads):

The BMW Forum
(Members: 183,864, Threads: 978,328, Posts: 13,296,986)
The Fashion Spot
(Members: 66,746, Threads: 45,987, Posts: 4,529,436)
The Mercedes Forum
(Members: 33,931 , Posts: 105,042, Topics: 31,073)
The Purse Forum
(Members: 128,573, Threads: 299,826, Posts: 7,153,120)
The Rolex Forum
(Members: 14,970, Threads: 44,550, Posts: 685,615)

The amount of people discussing luxury brand features, pricing, quality, advertising, where to buy, etc.—in one location—is rather amazing.There are some other interesting aspects of these forums that might persuade the luxury brand marketer to consider utilizing these forums to “listen” to what brand loyalists are thinking, feeling, and saying. The members are:

international
influential and persuasive
passionate and loyal
purchasers that range from extremely wealthy to average income
brand experts that help to educate non-experts
developing on-line friendships that lead to off-line meetings
vocal about price, features and quality
discussing off-line sales/service experiences and are relaying them on-line

These forums are the perfect example of how customers are having conversations about the brand and creating their own emotional experiences on their own without the complete influence of marketing.
If I were a luxury brand manager, the first thing I would do is tap into these forums and “listen” to what customers and potential customers are saying about my brand. The second thing I would do is determine who the loyal and influential brand experts are and engage them in meaningful conversation on- and off-line. The third thing I would do is implement their feedback. And finally, I would offer brand experts preliminary showings of all new product offerings and enlist them in word of mouth marketing via the forums or their blogs to create buzz prior to the products being released.

[Note: Suzanne Hader wrote an article for Marketing Profs in May called “Five Ways to Optimize Luxury Online Sales Channels.” In this article Suzanne discusses social media applications (not forums) and bloggers. You need to be a Marketing Profs member to view the full article.]

[Photo: iStock]