Luxury Brands

A luxury brand or prestige brand is a brand whose majority of products sold are luxury goods.

There are however certain products marques who despite their lack of luxury good sales still enjoy the prestige of a luxury brand.

The automobile manufacturer Hummer is an example of such a marque. Even though none of the vehicles in the Hummer line-up meet the requirements to be classified as a luxury car.

Another market charaterictic of luxury goods is their very high sensitivity to economic upturns and downturns, high profit margins as well as prices, and very tightly controlled brands.

Other guidelines may apply to certain luxury markets such as the luxury vehicle market.

For example, following a nearly crippling attempt to widely licence their brand in the early 1990s, the Gucci brand is now largely sold in directly owned stores.

The Burberry brand is generally considered to have diluted its brand image in the UK in the early 2000s by over-licensing its brand, thus reducing its cachet as a brand whose products were consumed only by the elite.

LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) is the largest luxury good producer in the world with over fifty brands. It made a profit of €2bn on sales of €12bn in 2003.

Other market leaders in include the Gucci Group and Richemont.

Locations

Like other sectors of the retail market, luxury goods retailers like to cluster their stores closely together in order to create a shopping "destination."

In the case of luxury goods, these areas are generally perceived to be centers of luxury retailers.

* PC Hooftstraat, Amsterdam

* Newbury Street, Boston

* Magnificent Mile and Oak Street, Chicago

* Las Vegas Strip: The Forum Shops, Via Bellagio, Wynn Las Vegas; Las Vegas

* Sloane Street and Bond Street, London
* Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, California
(Los Angeles area)

* Via Montenapoleone, Milan

* Tretyakovsky Proyezd, Kitai-gorod,
Moscow

* Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue, New
York City

* Place Vendôme and the Triangle d'Or,
Paris

* Via Condotti, Rome

* Santana Row, San Jose

* Myeongdong, Seoul

* Aoyama and Omotesando, Tokyo

* Star Hill and Suria KLCC, Kuala Lumpur

· Königsallee, Düsseldorf (Germany)

Current luxury car manufacturers

These are luxury car manufacturers whose models are currently on the market.

* Acura

* Aston Martin

* Audi

* Bentley

* BMW

* Cadillac

* Infiniti

* Jaguar (Includes Daimler)

* Land Rover (LR3, Range Rover)

* Lexus

* Lincoln

* Maserati

* Maybach

* Mercedes-Benz

* Rolls-Royce