The Changing Meaning of Luxury

Ian Yeoman and Una McMahon-Beattie

Chapter 6 in Revenue Management, 2011, pp 72-85 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract When Marie Antoinette supposedly said “let them eat cake”, she was seen as a luxury junkie who’s out of control spending grated on the poor and unfortunate French people. But today, cake has become one of our favourite luxury foods. A revolution has taken place where individuals in the world have got richer. Luxury is no longer the embrace of the kings and queens of France but the mass marketing phenomenon of everyday life. Simply put, luxury has become luxurincation of the commonplace (Berry, 1994; Twitchell, 2001). The word luxury is derived from luxus, meaning sensuality, splendour, pomp and its derivative luxuria, means extravagance, riot and so on. The rise of the luxury in Western society is associated with increasing affluence and consumption. It is a phenomenon that has been creeping up in society for hundreds of years. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was Thorsten Velben (1899) who coined the term “conspicuous consumption” in his theory of the leisure class. Veblen’s argument is based upon the belief that as wealth spreads, what drives consumers’ behaviour is increasingly neither subsistence nor comfort but the “attainment of esteem and envy of fellow men”. Because male wage earners are too circumspect to indulge themselves, they deposit consumption on surrogates. Vicarious ostentation is observed in Victorian men who encouraged their wives and daughters to wear complicated trappings of wealth.

Keywords: Green Roofing; Premium Price; lUxury Good; Conspicuous Consumption; Luxury Brand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-29477-6_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230294776

DOI: 10.1057/9780230294776_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().