What’s Next — Prospects for the Future of Luxury Retailing

This session will explore the trends, changes, opportunities and challenges of luxury retailing through 2010. In the recent past each decade has brought about momumental changes at retail. The 80’s was the decade of the mall with the explosion of mall shopping across the country. The 90’s was the decade of the discounters as Wal-Mart rolled out their discount shopping experience from the heartland to both coasts. The first decade of the new millennum is the decade of luxury with retailers offering traditional heritage brand luxury to the ‘classes,’ while retailers serving the mass market offer up new, more affordable versions of luxury for the ‘masses.’

This session moderated by Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing and author of Let Them Eat Cake: Marketing Luxury to the Massess — as well as the Classes (Dearborn Trade Publishing, 2005) will moderate this session that will be divided into two seminar tracks:

• Future Vision in Luxury Retailing for the ‘Classes’
• Future Vision in Luxury Retailing for the ‘Masses’

Danziger will present the latest research on luxury market retailing based upon Unity Marketing’s exclusive 2005 year-end survey of luxury consumers. She will explain the demographic and psychographic forces at play that are driving consumers’ demand for more luxury at all income levels, from the masses to the classes. She will show how the luxury product brand and the retailers’ brand are completely intertwined in the consumers’ mind and work synergistically together to deliver a luxury experience to the consumer. And how consumers perceive the price/value relationship as another key component of the luxury retailing equation. Danziger calls these three factors the luxury branding ‘triple-play’ — product brand, retailer brand, price/value. Joining her will be two panels of retail executives at the forefront of luxury retailing to the ‘classes’ and the ‘masses’ who will share their experience marketing luxury today and into the future.