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This paper aims to understand the effect of food and beverage (F&B) services on the operating performance of luxury hotels and to identify the heterogeneous effects of the luxury hotels’ F&B operation on the business performance between Asia and the USA.

Operating performance of luxury hotels in Asia (37 hotels), including Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong and in the USA (72 hotels), including New York, California, Florida, Illinois and Texas was collected from STR reports. This study applied generalized estimating equations models to reach the conclusions.

The emphasis on F&B services exhibits a significant positive effect on the operating performance of luxury hotels in Asia. The occupancy rate and gross operating profit per available room of luxury hotels in Asia have improved with the investment in F&B offerings. Therefore, a distinctive F&B offering should be considered as one of the main products and services rather than a supplementary service in Asia. While devotion to F&B services lacks a significant positive effect on luxury hotels in the USA.

This study is the first effort to identify the importance of luxury hotels’ F&B operation for the overall hotel performance in Asia and the USA by focusing on the entire industry’s operating information.

The market for luxury is growing rapidly. While there is a significant body of literature on luxury goods, academic research has largely ignored luxury services. The purpose of this article is to open luxury services as a new field of investigation by developing the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings to build the luxury services literature and show how luxury services differ from both luxury goods and from ordinary (i.e. non-luxury) services.

This paper uses a conceptual approach drawing upon and synthesizing the luxury goods and services marketing literature.

This article makes three contributions. First, it shows that services are largely missing from the luxury literature, just as the field of luxury is mostly missing from the service literature. Second, it contrasts the key characteristics of services and related consumer behaviors with luxury goods. The service characteristics examined are non-ownership, IHIP (i.e. intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, and perishability), the three additional Ps of services marketing (i.e. people, processes, and physical facilities) and the three-stage service consumption model. This article derives implications these characteristics have on luxury. For example, non-ownership increases the importance of psychological ownership, reduces the importance of conspicuous consumption and the risk of counterfeiting. Third, this article defines luxury services as extraordinary hedonic experiences that are exclusive whereby exclusivity can be monetary, social and hedonic in nature, and luxuriousness is jointly determined by objective service features and subjective customer perceptions. Together, these characteristics place a service on a continuum ranging from everyday luxury to elite luxury.

This article provides suggestions on how firms can enhance psychological ownership of luxury services, manage conspicuous consumption, and use more effectively luxury services' additional types of exclusivity (i.e. social and hedonic exclusivity).

This is the first paper to define luxury services and their characteristics, to apply and link frameworks from the service literature to luxury, and to derive consumer insights from these for research and practice.

The purpose of the study is to identify critical value-creating elements of luxury services expressed in ratings and reviews posted on third-party sites and examine cross-cultural differences. To this end, the research analyzed online ratings and reviews of luxury hotels posted on TripAdvisor from customers of four European regions (East, North, South and West).

Eight hundred thirty-eight online user-generated ratings and reviews of luxury hotels were analyzed quantitatively using MANOVA and qualitatively using text analysis.

The study findings support (a) that product and physical evidence are the most critical experiential elements of luxury hotels' offerings and (b) cultural differences among tourists from various regions of Europe in their hotel ratings and reviews. Specifically, Eastern and Northern Europeans are more generous in their review ratings than western and southern Europeans. Moreover, eastern Europeans value the hotel's physical evidence/environment whereas western Europeans prioritize the core product (room and food) followed by the physical environment/servicescape. Southern Europeans and Northern Europeans value most the personnel, followed by the physical environment and the core product, respectively.

Cultural differences provide several implications with regard to luxury services segmentation, social media management, service marketing mix development and hotel promotion.

The value of this study originates from studying post–purchase customer behavior in luxury services from a cross-cultural perspective. Moreover, identifying critical aspects of value-creating customer experience in a luxury context adds to the available literature.

The luxury segment of the hospitality industry has experienced substantial growth in the past decade. Unfortunately, the notion of perceived luxury values has received scant attention, and there is a lack of valid framework to capture consumers’ value perceptions in the context of luxury hospitality services. Using luxury restaurant as an example of luxury hospitality services, this paper aims to establish the structure of luxury hospitality values and their measures and to investigate the relationship between luxury hospitality values and purchase intentions.

A survey questionnaire was developed to test the proposed luxury value framework. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical linear regression were used to test the hypotheses.

Four luxury restaurant value dimensions including functional value, hedonic value, symbolic/expressive value and financial value were identified. The study results further reveal that a consumer’s purchase intention is influenced primarily by hedonic value, followed by functional value and financial value. Interestingly, unlike in the context of luxury goods, the purchase of luxury restaurant services is not substantially influenced by symbolic/expressive value.

Hospitality firms catering to the affluent might use the luxury value framework to better understand what drives their customers’ purchase intentions, and use such knowledge to create new services or to improve current product offerings. In addition, luxury hospitality companies can use this luxury value framework to position their brands/products.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first that empirically tests a luxury value framework in the luxury hospitality context and investigates the relationship between luxury hospitality values and purchase intentions.

What role do consumers play in constructing their own luxury experiences? Challenging the dominant product-focus in luxury conceptualizations, this research note conceptualizes agentic luxury in the context of luxury services. Drawing on extant luxury research, the purpose of this article is to develop how consumers may take on more active roles in enacting their own luxury services experiences.

This research note is conceptual but builds on managerial insights from the luxury service sector to conceptualize the concept of agentic luxury.

Our research note develops a conceptual definition of agentic luxury and provides seven research propositions for its impact on luxury service encounters. These propositions detail how consumers engage in constructing their luxury experience; the roles of consumers and luxury service providers in the experience; and boundary conditions of agentic luxury. The authors further develop the role of customer-as-designer and highlight similarities and differences for agentic luxury between luxury goods and services.

The authors combine the recognized specificities of the largely goods-dominated luxury sector with service research to show how luxury service providers can engage customers for more complete and engaging luxury service experiences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research note is the first to conceptualize agentic luxury. The authors show how agentic luxury fills a gap in the current literature, and our propositions advance the relevance of agentic luxury for luxury service research.

This research aims to investigate differences between cohorts and perceptions of luxury goods and services.

A survey asked participants to rate goods to determine their perceptions of luxury. Participants also provided information concerning elasticity and motivations for purchasing goods and services. A total of 347 participants in three age groups completed the questionnaire.

The study shows that there are significant differences between cohort groups in their perceptions of luxury goods and services, especially between the oldest and youngest cohorts. The elasticity measures showed that for all three cohorts, certain goods and services were inelastic and, therefore, were considered not to be luxury goods. The reasons why people buy goods they do not need varied between cohorts.

The results of the study may not be generalizable to other groups of consumers because it was a convenience sample.

The results of this study show that marketers need to tailor messages to individual cohort groups. Consumers' experiences at their “coming of age” do influence perceptions of luxury. There are different motivations for buying among the cohort groups. Identifying and leveraging these motivators in marketing communication will help to target these groups with appropriate messages. Marketers need to understand those motivations and develop communication campaigns that target those groups.

Little research has focused on the cohort perception of luxury. Although there is evidence to suggest there will be differences between age groups, this study seeks to investigate those differences to help marketers to tailor their messages more effectively.

The market for luxury products and services plays a significant role in the world economy. The luxury hotel market is a crucial segment within the global market for luxury products and services. Luxury hospitality recorded a 5% growth rate along with demand for luxury cruises recording the growth of 7%, the highest among all luxury segments. The remarkable performance of luxury products and services over a period is attributed to the laudable marketing communication strategies of luxury marketers. In this research, we aimed to analyse how a multi-brand hospitality firm differentiates its luxury brand with other luxury brands in the portfolio, using textual messages aimed to communicate the uniqueness of the brands in its official websites. The case study method and content analysis are adapted to achieve the research objective. The study results show that different luxury brands under the brand portfolio of Marriott International can communicate the differences through the textual contents. Most of the differentiation relies on brand-specific features, traditions, services, location of the hotel and metadata on the Internet, followed by branded differentiators. It may be concluded that Marriott has been successful to an extent in using text contents in the website to differentiate its luxury brands.

To explore the impact of luxury hotel brands’ technologies on guests’ perceived value enhancement and its consequences, this study aims to examine how task–technology fit (TTF) and luxury–technology fit (LTF) affect luxury hotel guests’ perceived value enhancement, satisfaction and brand loyalty.

A scenario-based online survey was conducted with existing and potential luxury hotel guests. The relationships among TTF, LTF, value enhancement, satisfaction and loyalty were examined using partial least square structural equation modeling. Moreover, the respondents were asked their preferred service agent (human staff vs technology) in a luxury hotel to further understand luxury hotel guests’ perception toward technological services in a luxury hotel setting.

The results reveal that both TTF and LTF have significant impacts on the luxury hotel’s value enhancement, and the impacts of TTF and LTF on value enhancement are moderated by the guests’ technology optimism. The findings of this study suggest that the luxury hotel brands must consider the fit between the image of their brand and the technology to increase guests’ perceived value enhancement, satisfaction and loyalty.

Applying categorization theory, this study extended the concept of brand extension to technology implementation. The findings advance the current understanding of how technology affects luxury hotel consumers’ perceived value enhancement, and how consumers’ optimism influences the impacts of TTF and LTF on value enhancement.

By examining the effects of TTF and LTF on luxury hotel guests’ perceived value enhancement, this study would shed light on luxury hotel brands’ technology implementation strategies. By understanding how TTF and LTF affect consumers’ perceived value enhancement, luxury hotel brands will be able to better design their technology implementation plans.

Even though luxury hotel brands are well known for offering high-level and personalized services through interpersonal interactions between employees and consumers, they have been actively implementing a variety of technologies to enhance guest experience and satisfaction. This study investigates the role of technological innovations in a luxury hotel setting. Particularly, this study examines how technologies improve guests’ perceived value of a luxury hotel and lead to satisfaction and loyalty.

This research aims to investigate the effect of personal values on customer satisfaction and whether positive experiences lead to positive word of mouth (WOM) about the luxury hotel service from the Confucian perspective.

This research developed a structural equation model for testing. Research data collected from Confucian participants who have used luxury hotel services in Vietnam, where Confucianism is the dominant cultural paradigm.

The results show that there is a positive relationship between Confucian customer personal values and satisfaction, as well as between customer satisfaction and positive WOM; personal values had no effect on positive WOM.

This research implies that the personal values of Confucian consumers constitute the lens through which they view the world, thus the service personal values reflect their priorities on luxury hotel service consumption. A key to success for luxury hotel service providers lies in providing services that enhance Confucian customer personal values, which allow service providers to intercommunicate with the Confucian consumers’ core.

This research is significant because there is little research on personal values from the cultural mechanism of Confucian culture. This research also comes up with a richer understanding of the relationship between customer personal values and behaviors within the luxury hotel segment.