28. Toward a Research Agenda in Luxury

Over the past years, there has been a remarkable growth in the luxury market. For example, the market for personal luxury goods has more than tripled during the last two decades from €73 billion in 1994 to €224 billion in 2014 [5]. This is especially striking in view of the persistent economic challenges and the enduring socio-political tensions many industrialized countries are facing. In response to the growing luxury market, researchers from diverse disciplines, such as Marketing, Psychology, Sociology and Economics, have endeavored to understand the luxury phenomenon. Most studies have been undertaken in the following research fields: definition and conceptualization of luxury, luxury products, and luxury brands; relationship between luxury, necessity, art, and fashion, luxury’s history and the market’s evolution; consumers of luxury; consumption of luxury goods; conspicuous and status consumption as well as mass production of luxury or new forms of luxury consumption; strategic aspects in the luxury domain; counterfeiting of luxury [22].The multitude of studies dealing with luxury shows that the growth of the luxury market has generated a great interest in research in this area. However, in view of current phenomena such as the growing importance of the sharing economy or corporate social responsibility activities, the luxury sector will undergo major changes which, in turn, will have significant consequences for research in the luxury domain. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to identify major topics in future luxury research. To provide considerable insights with regard to future luxury research, we develop a research agenda in luxury. In doing this, we provide an overview of which topics might be at the core of luxury research in the next five years. With our paper we contribute to existing literature on luxury, as we stimulate and provide specific directions for future research. In the next section of this paper, we introduce the Business Model Canvas by Osterwalder (2010) [74] as the conceptual background of our research agenda. After that, we explain our research agenda development process. The core topics of the agenda will then be discussed and embedded into the Business Model Canvas. Here, we focus on the key activities, key resources, value propositions, channels and customer relationships of a luxury company. In sum, we develop a research agenda proposing six particularly valuable sections for future research in luxury: experiential luxury, innovative luxury, advertising luxury, responsible luxury, lean luxury, and sharing luxury. Conclusively, we base on this research agenda to provide an outlook for future of luxury in research and practice.