Moments of luxury: Hedonic escapism as a luxury experience

Abstract

Understanding how consumers experience luxury represents a challenge; despite the rapid growth of luxury experiences over the past decade, luxury research remains focused on a product-logic. In responding to calls for more research into luxury experiences, we draw from a three year ethnographic study in theorizing “moments of luxury,” which we define as a collectively based, consumer-driven experience that features hedonic escapism and modifications to conventional luxury characteristics. Consumption experiences become luxurious as consumers forge an unconventional form of exclusivity that builds upon aesthetic dress and movement, authentic history and decor, and exclusivity-by-practice, in achieving temporally brief, hedonic escapes from everyday life. The findings provide insights for providers of consumer experiences and for established luxury brands, both through the focus on the role of hedonic escapism in forming consumers’ luxury experiences and through the identification of an alternative form of exclusivity.