The purpose of this research is to explore how customers cope with resource depletion through luxury service experiences and introduce a conceptual framework for restorative luxury. The conceptual model demonstrates how luxury service experiences support coping with resource depletion and facilitates resource restoration. The conceptual framework also delineates that the restorative luxury process is a precursor to transformative well-being experiences.
The luxury spa industry was chosen as the context of this research in developing the conceptual framework of restorative luxury experience. Using a qualitative approach, the authors examine insights from 21 experienced spa managers through in-depth interviews, applying hermeneutic interpretivism to understand customer experiences.
Findings of this research reveal that customers use dual coping strategies, engagement and disengagement coping, through luxury spa services, leading to cognitive, emotional and physical restoration, termed restorative luxury experience. This process fosters self-restoration across body, mind and spirit and justifies the prohibitive cost of luxury spa services, encouraging repeat patronage.
This study advances transformative service research (TSR) by introducing restorative luxury, a novel framework that reconceptualizes luxury services as vehicles for enduring eudaimonic well-being, highlighting a previously underexplored pathway for human flourishing in the luxury context. By applying conservation of resources theory, it further advances TSR by conceptualizing the service encounter as a process of personal transformation rather than mere reciprocal exchange.
