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The purpose of this paper is to explore the decision-making process used by luxury fashion retail buyers in Greece in order to assess the applicability of Sheth's (1981) model to the selection of brands and collections by retail buyers in luxury fashion resellers.

The study takes an interpretive approach, utilising participant observation and semi-structured interviews with retail buyers in five luxury fashion reseller companies in Greece, which boasts the world's highest proportion of luxury fashion consumers. Qualitative data were analysed thematically according to the theoretical constructs in Sheth's (1981) model of merchandise buyer behaviour.

Brand reputation, quality, appropriateness for the market and exclusive distribution were the most important criteria for supplier selection. For evaluating merchandise, the most important criteria were design, style, fashionability and quality. The most relevant influencer of decision making in supplier selection was the competitive structure in terms of the power balance between retailer and brand. For merchandise selection, the most relevant influencing factors were retailer size, management mentality, product positioning and type of decision (re-buy or new task).

Due to the exploratory nature of the study and its focus on the context of a particular geographical marketplace, the findings may not be generalised to other countries.

This paper provides an insight into the decision-making practice of retail buyers in Greek luxury fashion retailers, where the buying task involves balancing the retailer's commercial interests with a more cultural role in terms of shaping fashion trends and generating PR and publicity for the retailer. The task is further complicated by the power imbalance between retailer and brand, enabling brands to impose limitations on the buyer's decision. Additionally, the combined influence of shortening product life cycles, increasing product variety and the emergence of a new and younger luxury fashion consumer requires a shift from intuitive to scientific, data-driven decision making.

Shall luxury firms promote their sustainable development goals (SDGs)? What are the risks and the competitive advantages? Some answers from sustainability-oriented luxury buyers are provided.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis from an online survey of 315 luxury buyers in 28 countries.

Sustainability-oriented luxury buyers want branding strategies aligned with the SDGs and rank SDGs in order of importance for the luxury industry. However, they are unable to rank consistently most brands based on their sustainability efforts. The Stella McCartney brand is a clear exception to the general findings: sustainability-oriented luxury buyers rank Stella the most sustainable luxury brand by a vast margin, show willingness to purchase more from this brand, recommend it and are ready to pay a premium.

The paper uses partial ranking of 20 luxury brands because in pretests, luxury buyers found it difficult to provide a complete ranking of the sustainability efforts of all the brands. Further research in more cultural or geographical contexts is needed.

The research empirically provides an example of a successful marketing strategy leveraging the SDGs to meet sustainability-oriented luxury buyers with targeted actions and messaging to gain competitive advantage.

Millennials have an interest in luxury and premium products across all types of goods, but little is known about how this translates into their preferences for wine. In general, Millennials are spending less per bottle on wine than older generations, but what are the characteristics of the subset of Millennials who are spending more on wine? The purpose of this article is to develop an understanding of Millennials’ buying habits with regard to higher-priced, luxury wines.

A survey instrument was designed and used to collect responses from 189 Millennial wine drinkers in the US. Statistical tests and a binary probit model were used to analyze the results.

The findings suggest that there is a subset of US Millennials that present a viable market for luxury wines.

This research is limited by the sample itself, as a relatively small, convenience sample of Millennial wine drinkers.

Wineries interested in targeting a Millennial crowd will benefit by recognizing that male, married Millennials with annual incomes of over $50,000 are more likely to buy higher-priced wines. In addition, findings suggest that traditional and non-traditional outlets for wine information are being used as these Millennials seek out information about wine.

While Millennial wine consumers are still developing their tastes, this is one of the first articles to isolate the Millennials who are buying higher-priced wines. This research sheds light on a potentially lucrative consumer segment.

For as long as luxury has existed, it has been criticized, by philosophers and moralists, who condemn self-indulgence, hedonism and vanity. Yet these concerns have not prevented the remarkable expansion of the luxury sector, evidence that most buyers revel in unashamed luxury. Modern economists point out the link between the development of the luxury market and the growth of social inequality. This study aims to assess how much guilt consumers feel during luxury purchases and identify its levers.

Based on 3,162 real luxury buyers from 6 countries, both Asian and western, emerging and mature luxury markets, a partial least squares-structural equation models (PLS-SEM) analysis assesses the level of guilt experienced during luxury purchases and identifies which drivers most impact guilt.

This study assesses the presence of a little guilt among a significant portion of luxury buyers across countries. Two countries present extreme scores: the USA (55.6%) and Japan (32%). Overall, the main driver of guilt is that luxury makes economic inequality highly visible; interestingly the pursuit of hedonism reduces the feelings of guilt.

These findings have notable implications for luxury companies as the long-term success of this sector would be questionable if it attracts social criticism and induces distressing feelings among clients.

Luxury brands need to implement guilt reducing communication strategies.

The luxury sector as a whole should redefine its purpose and mission.

This level of guilt experienced during purchases rarely has been investigated in prior luxury research. Yet luxury addresses larger targets, from the happy few to the happy many. Thanks to PLS-SEM modelization, the same hierarchy of guilt driving factors is revealed across countries.

This paper sets out to examine how social and personality factors influence Chinese consumers' attitudes towards counterfeits of luxury brands and how these two sets of variables influence purchase intention. It provides a profile of buyers and non‐buyers of counterfeits of luxury brands.

A self‐administered questionnaire was designed using established scales. A survey was conducted in downtown Shanghai through the “mall intercept” method. A variety of statistical techniques were used to analyze the data.

Status consumption and integrity are strong influencers of purchase intention, whereas normative susceptibility, information susceptibility, personal gratification, value consciousness, and novelty seeking had weaker influencing relationships. The attitude towards counterfeits of luxury brands is found to influence purchase intention. Collectivism does not influence attitudes nor purchase intentions towards counterfeits of luxury brands.

The findings are limited to Chinese consumers in Shanghai, which cannot be generalized across the whole of China or other international markets. Further, only luxury brands are considered. Other cultural contexts and product categories should be investigated in the future.

The research provides an in‐depth understanding of Chinese consumers' attitudes towards counterfeits of luxury brands. The research findings can be used to formulate strategies for academia, practitioners and, more importantly, policy makers to help eradicate, or at the very least curb, counterfeiting activities.

The majority of previous studies focused on counterfeiting and piracy of music and other optical media, whereas this paper focused exclusively on luxury brands. Status consumption is also added as an antecedent towards attitudes and purchase intention of counterfeits.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the online and in-store shopping behavior towards luxury goods.

Two studies are presented. Study one is qualitative in nature. It uses a mixed method approach and explores why luxury consumers decide to purchase luxury products online or in-store. The second study is a quantitative one. It tests the hypotheses drawn from the first study and validates the qualitative results.

Online and in-store luxury shoppers are influenced by different motivational factors. Online luxury shoppers are price-conscious, prefer the online product availability and have a higher level of trust towards online customer reviews. In-store shoppers who are more averse to online risks find it very important to see the product personally before the purchase and value shopping experience and interactions. In addition, differences exist between the online shopping behaviors of regular and luxury shoppers.

It contributes to luxury consumption research and expands shopping motivation literature by investigating luxury buyer behavior in the online context.

Luxury retailers should pay attention to the newly emerging segment of online luxury consumers. Lack of trust prevents more luxury consumers from shopping on the internet and the trustworthiness of the sellers can help attract potential shoppers. Luxury retailers can cater to the needs of different types of luxury buyers.

This paper is the first exploratory, comparative study on luxury consumption in the online and physical store environments. It investigates the motivational factors that drive the shopping behavior of internet and in-store luxury shoppers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of personality factors and attitudes toward consumers' willingness to knowingly purchase counterfeit luxury brands.

Convenience sampling method is to be employed and a self‐administered questionnaire distributed to students in a large Australian University. A commonly counterfeited luxury branded product will be used as the stimulus of the study. In total, 202 useable responses have been retained for analysis.

The findings are that attitudes do not influence consumers' willingness to purchase counterfeit luxury brands. Integrity is noted to be a strong influencer of both attitudes and consumer willingness to purchase consistently. Both buyers and non‐buyers are tested for their attitudinal differences. Status consumption and materialism does not play a role in influencing attitudes or willingness to purchase.

Only one product category is looked at. Other sampling methods can be looked into such as mall intercept. Culture and nationality may also have influences on moral and ethical issues which can be tested in future studies.

Advertisers and strategists should consider putting a more “human face” on the damaging effects of counterfeiting and look into the possible demographic factors. Consumers should be educated on the negative consequences of counterfeiting and effects on economy.

While past studies have delved into examining consumer attitudes towards counterfeit products, a low involvement luxury brand item was not utilized as a stimulus. An Australian context has not been looked into.

Recently, internet has turned out to be the fastest growing channel for luxury sales. Surprisingly, very few studies have focused on understanding the major drivers behind online luxury goods consumption, particularly in the emerging market context. Therefore, the key objectives of this study are to, first, develop a framework to understand factors affecting consumers' intention to purchase luxury fashion goods online. Second, measure the moderating effect of perceived risk and web atmospherics on the relationship between attitude toward buying luxury fashion goods online and online luxury purchase intention.

Data were collected through structured questionnaires from a sample of 250 luxury fashion consumers in India. Collected data were analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Hayes Process macro in SPSS.

Study findings indicate that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment and price consciousness have a direct as well as an indirect relationship via attitude on online luxury purchase intention. The results also revealed that web atmospherics moderate the relationship between attitude toward buying luxury fashion goods online and online luxury purchase intention.

This is one of the first studies that explores the moderating role of perceived risk and web atmospherics in the context of luxury market. It will help luxury marketers to develop appropriate strategies for selling luxury goods online in emerging markets like India.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of personality factors on consumers' attitudes toward counterfeits and their willingness to knowingly purchase counterfeit luxury brands. Product performance and useful life are included to investigate their influence on consumers' willingness to purchase counterfeit luxury brands.

A self‐administered questionnaire is designed using established scales. Data are collected using a convenience sampling method from a large Australian university. Regression analyses are conducted using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

Integrity is found to be the only factor influencing attitudes toward counterfeits. The useful life of a counterfeit luxury brand showed significant influence on consumers' willingness to purchase. Attitudinal factors and personality factors do not influence consumers' willingness to purchase counterfeit luxury brands.

The findings are limited to an Australian context. Mall intercept method can be implemented for future studies. The paper has only examined a high involvement luxury brand. Other product categories or low involvement products can be further investigated.

It is recommended for government to implement educational programs that are not only limited to schools, but also to multinational companies and domestic businesses. Luxury brand owners are also encouraged to distinguish their products through emphasis on product attributes, such as their product's useful life.

A specific high‐involvement luxury brand is studied as opposed to previous studies only examining counterfeit luxury brands as a whole. Furthermore, this paper has also examined both personality factors and product attributes.

This paper aims to theorize counterfeit luxury consumption among millennials from a generational identity perspective.

The paper proposes and tests a model of counterfeit buying behavior using an online survey of 467 millennial respondents. The study uses multi-item measures from the extant literature and uses the structural equation modeling technique to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal when millennials have a self-defining relationship with their generation, they tend to internalize the generational norm pertaining to counterfeit luxury consumption. Millennials’ counterfeit related values: market mavenism, postmodernism, schadenfreude and public self-consciousness contribute to their generational identity. Moreover, market mavenism, cool consumption and public self-consciousness establish counterfeit luxury consumption as a generational norm.

The findings of this paper suggest that the expertise and influence of market mavens can be used to deter counterfeit consumption. Moreover, luxury brands must communicate a cool image to offset the rebellious image of counterfeits. Further, from a standardization versus adaption standpoint, the generational perspective allows for the standardization of anti-counterfeiting campaigns.

The paper makes a novel contribution to the counterfeiting literature by demonstrating that millennials pursue counterfeit luxury brands when they pledge cognitive allegiance to their generation. The paper, thus, extends the identity perspective of counterfeit luxury consumption to group contexts. The authors also test and validate the role of descriptive norms in group contexts by introducing the construct generational norm to counterfeiting literature.