Luxury Beauty Industry: A qualitative analysis on Millennials’ perception and purchase behaviour for this category. Are the trends for the future already in place? How should companies manage brands to address them?

Abstract

During the last years, the luxury market has experienced a steady growth pattern and it is perceived to continue to grow in the next years as well. One of the generations who is contributing to this growth is Generation Y or the “Millennials”. A particularly thriving sector for luxury is beauty. The following research proceeds with attempting to understanding how Millennials perceive, consider and purchase luxury beauty products. First, a collection and review on academic literature on what is luxury and its market performance, as well as what is intended by luxury beauty products will be provided. A qualitative and explorative approach has been used, in particular by using in-depth interviews as a research method, in order to understand the motivations that lie behind consumer behaviours. Additionally, after having accurately analysed the results from the interviews also by comparing them to current academic literature, this work also atempts to understand at which pace the trends that have been detected in the market in the last years are taking place. It finally provides some recommendations for companies in order to be able to cope with these changes in the next future.