The consumption of luxury goods and services is taking new directions. Luxury marketing academics have been discussing this change in the concept of luxury for a while now and the coronavirus pandemic has brought additional strength to it. The new concept we are referring to is an unconventional luxury, a definition that changes the way luxury is consumed as it strongly emphasises luxury as a hedonic and personalised experience, whose symbolism is private and determined by the customer. Given this paradigm shift, luxury brands must adapt to maintain their relevance in the market.
Our investigation quantitatively explores the relevance of the service-dominant logic, through value co-creation (VCC), as an approach to increase the perceived luxury value of a brand and, simultaneously, the impact of this approach on luxury brand attitude and brand desire.
The results indicate that VCC positively influences individual perceptions of luxury. Similarly, it strengthens the customer’s attitude towards the luxury brand and brand desire through the mediating effect of individual luxury value perceptions.
Luxury brands' social media and gender work as moderators of the hypothesised relationships. The results also corroborate the idea that unconventional luxury is within the reach of many.
