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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Prof Teaches Fancy to the French

A business professor at Cal State Northridge is celebrating winning the best book of the year award for 2015 from the Paris Chamber of Commerce. “Marketing du Luxe” – “Luxury Marketing” – is a co-authored book written in French by academics and marketing professionals. It discusses how to manage luxury brands – a point of pride for French companies – and the innovative strategies and practices used by companies such as Christian Dior. Franck Vigneron, a French native who has taught at the school’s marketing department since 2000, tapped his experience as an entrepreneur and executive to pen a chapter that covers the creation and maintenance of a luxury brand. In 2005, Vigneron acquired a brand of cognac to show people what he could accomplish with his own brand, and actually practice what he preaches in the classroom. Annually, luxury merchandise sales account for $950 billion worldwide, said Vigneron, who emphasized that the field is highly profitable but specialized. When he first started working as a marketer in 1992, the luxury niche was almost nonexistent, but that didn’t stop his curiosity for seeking newer and better ways to sell high-end goods. “Luxury marketing is a subject that didn’t really exist (in 1992). All there was available was how to launch a new product, mass production of packaged goods and product categories. There was no need to study luxury, given that it was more expensive,” he told the Business Journal. Vigneron, who has also worked as a marketing consultant for Louis Vuitton and international jewelry companies, said that in order to market a luxury brand, authenticity is crucial. Nowadays companies tend to mass-produce products and pass them off as luxurious, a practice Vigneron said is known in French as “masstige.” For a brand to be truly luxurious, it can’t be mass-produced and it needs to be one of a kind, the author believes. “Paramount to the survival of a luxury brand is authenticity,” he said. Ben Guez, chief executive of L.A. digital marketing agency Laxir, said writing a book on luxury marketing in French makes sense given that France is associated with high culture. “Paris is reputed for being a luxury city and tourism is attracted by this image,” he said. “There is a strong presence of luxury goods in France so there is a big need for luxury marketing.” “Marketing du Luxe” is available on Amazon.com for $29. – Nicole Pinto

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