This book provides truly new insights into the seemingly elusive concept of luxury and it does so using a compact and convenient format. More precisely, it condenses the authors' groundbreaking book on Luxury: Marketing & Management - which has become a standard textbook on luxury and is used in Universities around the world - into easy to digest pieces of knowledge, yet maintains the essence of the full-fledged original. Thus, the Essentials provide the best format for people on the go yet provide a comprehensive entry into this fascinating world of luxury with its most unique products, ideas and challenges for consumers, managers and also scientists. Daniel A. Langer & Oliver P. Heil on why they wrote this book: "Whether we teach luxury to students or have discussions with luxury professionals or talk to luxury consumers, one common theme emerges again and again: While luxury seems to be easy to grasp at first, it quickly evolves into a most complicated endeavor. That is, its management poses most unique challenges, e.g. as price is often seemingly irrelevant. While intuitively there should be a lot of publications on luxury that really matter, there are only a few that try to meet the luxury challenge." "Luxury Essentials" has the ambition to provide what many call the "gold standard" in luxury publications "Luxury: Marketing & Management" to a much broader audience. It covers the key content in an essential, more compact, easy to digest format. To those who want to go beyond the essentials and get additional inspiration by more background and more examples, the original textbook would seem to be a natural next step to read. This is what the world's leading experts on luxury say about the authors' book "Luxury: Marketing & Management": "The book Luxury: Marketing & Management will be of considerable interest to both managers and academics seeking to understand and manage luxury goods in the 21st Century." Prof. Dr. David B. Montgomery, Stanford University & former Dean, Singapore Management University "This new and interesting research provides insight into the unique world of luxury and I have no doubt will prove a fascinating read for consumers and managers. Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has been at the pinnacle of automotive luxury for over 100 years and it is enlightening to see scientific research on the industry." Torsten Müller-Ötvös, CEO Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd "This book provides a large coverage of research on luxury, combined with new practical approaches, such how to analyze the luxury potential of a category on the basis of the price differentials. Very enlightening reading for managers and consumers alike." Prof. Dr. Gilles Laurent, HEC Paris "Many asked me in the course of the year what is the essence of luxury, and there is in my opinion a one world answer to this: luxury is pure emotion. In their book the authors provide an elaborated overview on luxury both from a researcher's and a manager's perspective. It's a must-read for those interested in luxury." Pietro Beccari, Chairman & CEO Fendi "As a maker of high-end mechanical watches, we are impressed by the precision of this analysis on the meaning of luxury today and the practical and valuable conclusions for a successful management of luxury products. Most interesting work!" Philippe Merk, CEO Audemars Piguet "This book's development of luxury signals provides a new and creative perspective of luxury. Reading it will amount to a very good investment for managers and be enlightening for consumers of luxury items around the globe. Fun to read!" Prof. Dr. Kris Helsen, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST)
About the Author: Daniel André Langer is President & CEO of ÉQUITÉ Luxury and Brand Equity Consultancy. In this role he advises luxury and premium brands. Before that he was Senior Vice President & GM North America at Henkel Beauty Care. At Henkel he fulfilled several international responsibilities, including Corporate VP SBU Body Care as well as Marketing Director in Germany, Japan & International Hair Care. He is also a Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the University of Mainz. The author holds a Ph.D. and a Masters degree from the University of Mainz. He also studied in Madrid and attended executive education at Harvard, IESE and Thunderbird. He presented his research on luxury and innovation at several leading research conferences and events in the USA and Europe. Dr. Langer's research focuses on deepening our understanding of luxury. Importantly, the marketing of regular products can benefit substantially from luxury research findings in terms of identifying different and creative strategies enhancing innovativeness, competitiveness and profitability of fast moving consumer goods. Oliver Heil is the Chaired Professor of Marketing at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz (Germany). He holds a Ph.D. as well as a Masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. The author taught at Wharton, UCLA, IU, Lingnan and HKUST. His publications appeared in leading scientific journals and he co-authored several books. As the recipient of various academic honors he currently serves on several boards and lectures on a variety of topics. Prof. Heil is working on identifying optimal sizes and formats for limited editions of luxury products and identifying causal factors of luxury design. Also, he is working on applying the luxury index toward regular products such as fast moving consumer goods as well as luxury products to enhance branding strategies. Prof. Heil is organizing a global luxury event bringing together managers, researchers and customers dealing with luxury products.