Dr. SHEETAL JAIN, Founder & CEO, LUXE Analytics – known as the “Luxury Industry Expert” in India – delivered a highly enriching session on the topic “Consumer Behavior on Luxury Brands” for BBA/BCA students & aspirants of Asian School of Business (ASB) on Wednesday, 17th February 2021 at 11:30 am under its “LEAD Corporate Lecture Series 2021”. As it evolved, the webinar presented itself as a highly resourceful session on the rare topic of ‘Luxury Brands’ for all BBA & BCA students and aspirants with corporate dreams!
Dr. Sheetal Jain is the founder & CEO of Luxe Analytics, a luxury market consulting firm based in New Delhi. She is an experienced luxury industry professional credited with conducting India’s first quantitative study on luxury consumer behavior. Her research work has been published across several international and national refereed research journals, books and other reputed publications. She has been widely covered across print, electronic and digital media as a thought leader in the luxury domain.
Dr. Jain has also introduced luxury marketing programs across leading institutions in India. In addition, she has conducted luxury industry related market research studies, workshops and training programs for leading corporations and business schools. She holds a PhD in Luxury Consumer Behavior from Aligarh Muslim University, India and has done executive program on ‘Luxury Retail Management’ from ESSEC Business School, Singapore.
As on date, Luxe Analytics is a specialized luxury market intelligence and strategic advisory firm focused on resolving growth and revenue related challenges of luxury brands. It helps luxury brands to make a deeper connection with their target customers and markets by a research driven strategic recommendation that combines luxury marketing and consumer behavior principles with technology, data and analytic driven approach. It importantly promises clear direction, sustainable growth and higher revenues.
An initiative of Asian Education Group (AEG) – considered as the largest centre for professional media, IT, law, management, fashion & hospitality education in Asia with world-class facilities – this webinar was organized by Asian School of Business (ASB) ) – which is a constituent group college of Asian Education Group and is ranked as the top private BBA/BCA colleges in Delhi NCR – for all BBA & BCA students & aspirants. Since this webinar was a closed session, students were required to register for the same. The webinar was followed by a lively Q&A Session with the distinguished guest.
This webinar session on Wednesday, 17th February 2021 with the leading luxury industry expert, Dr. Sheetal Jain began with the distinguished guest thanking the ASB team for inviting her for this talk and said that she was “greatly honoured to be here to share her thoughts on the subject of her research.”
Immediately taking up the topic of the day, she said that the subject of LUXURY was “a very interesting topic” and today there is “no sector where we do not see its relevance and ascendency.” Moving further, she shared her ideas and thoughts on the subject by way of a riveting PPT presentation. She began by putting up a most relevant question to all participants that read “What does LUXURY mean in one word?” A number of answers like “comfort”, “leisure”, “pleasure”, etc. were provided by the enthusiastic students.
Dr. Sheetal Jain then played a highly interesting video on the famous Italian brand Fendi titled “Fendi’s Fur Story” that showed in great detail how each of the brand’s famous fur coat were meticulously handcrafted into masterpieces that the world around admired and desired so much. With the help of this video, Dr. Jain offered the right definition of the word LUXURY by describing it as “a detailed piece of work in terms of material, precision and handcraftsmanship.” While on this, she also cited the Oxford Dictionary which has traced the origin of the word to its Latin version of “LUXUS” that is said to connote “extravagance” and “overindulgence”. Then, quoting the international subject-matter experts, Prof. Jean-Noel Kapferer and Vincent Bastien, she further explained how the word was commercially conceptualized as “something that is selective in its distribution, is image driven … and most expensive.”
Next, putting into focus the topic of the webinar – viz., “Consumer Behavior on Luxury Brands” – the erudite speaker sought to answer the most important question of “Why do people buy luxury brands?” At this point, she spoke at length about her own research study on the subject which happened to be the first such PhD in India. Extensively quoting from her research paper, Dr. Sheetal Jain concluded, “There are only two reasons why people buy luxury brands – (i) Personal reasons like hedonic self-fulfillment, which is intrinsic and (ii) Social reasons like conspicuous status value and susceptibility to normative influence, which is extrinsic.”
Thereafter, Dr. Sheetal Jain briefly touched upon the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the way it has affected the consumer behavior on luxury brands. She said, “The pandemic has drastically changed the consumer behavior on luxury products. Basically, there has been two key shifts in luxury consumer behavior – (i) From conspicuous to conscious consumption and (ii) From offline to online presence that has advanced the industry by at least 10 years.”
Following this, Dr. Sheetal Jain opened the session for questions from the ASB BBA/BCA students & aspirants. A series of questions related to the core concept of ‘Luxury Brands’ as well as the exact ‘Consumer Behavior’ built around it were put up by the students to which the highly learned and distinguished speaker provided the most convincing answers.
As he came to the end of her talk, in her message for the ASB students, Dr. Sheetal Jain shared some succinctly powerful words of advice and said, “Keep reading … Today the Readers; Tomorrow, the Leaders.”
This done, Dr. Sheetal Jain was presented with a glittering “Memento” on behalf of Asian Education Group, which was greatly appreciated by the honourable guest.
That brought this highly enriching session with the “Luxury Industry Expert” – Dr. SHEETAL JAIN, Founder & CEO, LUXE Analytics – to a fitting conclusion!