From silos to synergies: a systematic review of luxury in marketing research

Abstract

The significant growth of luxury products and services and their marketing in the last three decades has fueled substantial research interest among scholars and practitioners investigating the various aspects of luxury. However, the existing literature lacks a comprehensive review that includes all possible aspects of luxury. This paper responds to this gap by systematically reviewing the studies on this subject to provide a macro picture to identify the existing state of research, potential synergies, differences, and direction for future research. This review includes articles from 34 journals, covering 125 articles in total. The paper finds that the research on luxury revolves around four major themes: branding, consumption drivers, counterfeits, and marketing strategy. The paper then integrates various studies into these themes, enabling it to provide key insights for each domain, while examining their research design permits the analysis of the industry, geography, and methodological approaches. The paper finds that there are multiple theoretical paradoxes in the existing literature. Luxury research requires theoretical integration, should use real-world data to generate insights, and pay attention towards managerially relevant problems. The paper synthesizes implications across studies, identifies overlap and replication, understands disagreements and issues, and outlines potential research areas.