If anything has changed in the business world in the last century, it is the shift of the market from seller based to buyer based. The sentence itself doesn’t mean much of course, because the question most consumers wonder is, what does that mean? What is meant by seller based or buyer based? To answer that, I will provide a little personal anecdote, of a recent experience shopping at a LV store. Louis Vuitton today is one of the most well-known luxury goods manufacturers. It offers products anywhere from female hand bags to male handkerchiefs, and sometimes even children items. For all its fame and splendour however, I personally do not find the goods themselves to be that outstanding.
To think it charges $3500 for a jewelry box that without the LV sign I wouldn’t even consider buying for $35, LV did a very good job over the past 100 years promoting its brand from a simple, leather goods shop to the global visionary of luxury it is today. What amazes me even more is that even though I am fully aware that its products aren’t worth nearly as much as in terms of the quality, I am still willing to pay for them. This is the power of value-based marketing. Compared to 100 years ago LV today understands what its customers want. It understands that as a luxury brand its products’ values aren’t really in the products themselves but the brand. People purchase LV not for the qualities but its association with elegance and finesse, and so LV focuses just on that. An aura of classiness permeates every corner of an LV store, creating an atmosphere that elevates every item LV has to put on the shelf making every otherwise insignificant object suddenly all having its own personas. And as for the type of customers who do visit the shop, that’s exactly how they like it. A lesson learned from LV’s success story? Offer what the customers perceive as the greatest in value, even if it’s abstract as something like atmosphere.
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and myself