How Louis Vuitton Saves My Pride
Would you consider a RM8,000 for a branded hand bag crazy, or even outrageous?
If you think so, how about RM183,750 for a Louis Vuitton Tribute Patchwork bag?
So after all, when you compare, a RM8,000 for a Louis Vuitton equivalent branded hand bag does seems ‘reasonable’ isn’t it?
And how about by ‘accident’, you were lure into a store, and immediately find yourself surrounded with crazy, absurd, outrageous price tags. Your first reaction was to rush out immediately and vowed not to return to that store ever again. But if you just stick a little big longer, a seemly crazy price tag at first sight simply became ‘reasonable’.
Yes I am talking about spending over RM1,000 for a pair of branded sunglasses nowadays simply just normal, considering you have to pay 10 times more for a dress of a same brand.
No, this article is not about senseless spending. But rather how we fall prey into an increasingly common pricing strategy. Pioneered by the luxury brands, they are a master of introducing a limited edition items that push their brands ceiling price higher and higher until it out of touch with this word, and then they will have a range of products that are by most standards, expensive. But because they have a super high price product out there, those ‘expensive’ simple products are simply become ‘reasonable’. There is why we see a proliferation designer sunglasses, fragrances, etc these days.
The strategy is working fine - sales turnover of LVMH group, a company owning more than 50 luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Donna Karen, Kenzo, etc is bigger than the capital hungry Toyota group.
According to experts, that pricing strategy works because it ’salvages’ the little pride we have which was ‘destroyed’ by those crazy super high prizes at the first place. In short, we went through the anger-first-and-happiness-latter retail shopping emotional roller coaster.
Still skeptical? Think about the last time you were at the gambling table in Genting. When you saw those high rollers throwing hundred or thousand of Ringgit into the table, after a while, those money, regardless how much they are, just doesn’t seem like a real money any more, you just lost the sense of how much dose a thousand Ringgit really worth!
So does theRM183,750 Louis Vuitton Tribute Patchwork bag really that expensive? Probably not - considering that Channel will launch a bag made of white alligator skin and 3.56 carats of diamonds soon, retailing at RM910,525, the Louis Vuitton bag is really like a steal!