What drives Kuwaiti consumers to purchase luxury brands?

ABSTRACT

Luxury products evoke exclusivity and they compete in the market based on brand identity, brand awareness and perceived quality. The market for luxury products has grown exponentially in the last two decades. Thus, profiling luxury consumers is very important because it plays an important role in planning the target marketing strategy. This study investigates the influence of several functional, social and personal factors on Kuwaiti consumers’ luxury consumption. Using a large sample size (n = 880), logistic regression results show that brand image, social image, need for uniqueness, self-identity, cosmopolitanism, ethnocentrism, and materialism affect consumers’ luxury consumption in Kuwait. To the best of our knowledge this is the first empirical study to investigate luxury consumption in Kuwait. Thus, by focusing solely on luxury goods consumption in one of the richest nations in the Arab world, rather than on traditional commodities, this study enriches the knowledge base of this under-represented area.

KEYWORDS:

• Luxury consumption
• consumer profiling
• brand image
• Kuwait

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohamed M. Mostafa

Mohamed M. Mostafa has received a PhD in Business from the Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester, UK. He has also earned a MS in Applied Statistics from the University of Northern Colorado, USA, a MSc in Functional Neuroimaging from Brunel University, UK, a MA in Social Science Data Analysis from Essex University, UK, a MA in French Language and Civilization from Middlebury College, USA, a MA in Translation Studies from Portsmouth University, UK. He was employed at universities in the USA, Portugal, Egypt, Cyprus, Turkey, France, Spain, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Currently, he works as a full professor at GUST, Kuwait. He has published over 80 research papers in several leading academic peer reviewed journals, including Economic Modeling, Psychology & Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Indicators Research, Expert Systems with Applications, Sustainable Development, International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Social Network Analysis & Mining, International Journal of Intelligent Computing & Cybernetics, Neural Computing and Applications, among others.

Jean-Paul Arnaout

Jean-Paul Arnaout is an Associate Professor of Production and Operations Management at Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) in Kuwait. He earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Balamand (Lebanon), Master’s and PhD in Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, with a concentration in operations research from Old Dominion University (US). His research interests include optimization techniques, modelling and simulation, and scheduling and rescheduling. His articles have appeared in Annals of Operations Research, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, International Transactions in Operational Research, Simulation, and Journalof Manufacturing System, among others.