Luxury brands are incorporating Quick Response (QR) codes in their mailers, ads and stores to encourage purchase.

Quick Response (QR) codes are images that shoppers can scan and download through their camera phone to obtain more information about products or make purchases via their mobile phone.

Cartier introduced mobile advertising through GQ and Glamour mobizines (small version of magazines that can be easily viewed on mobile devices).

By 2012, 90% of the most active retail consumers will be unreachable by advertising via radio, television, and newsprint.

As phones have evolved rapidly into multimedia devices (think iPhone, the BlackBerry nation), their capabilities have opened unlooked-for advertising channels.

e-Commerce

Luxury brands, which have been late adopters of e-Commerce, are aggressively opening online stores.

In 2008, Cartier announced the start of online shopping in Japan.

In 2007, Louis Vuitton started online sales by launching an e-Commerce option on its Japanese website.

20% of Japanese consumers reported purchasing more luxury goods using the Internet in the last year.

Social Networking

e-Marketer predicts that almost 56.9 Mullion Americans will use a social network in the next year, a 5% increase of online users over 2007. Consequently, advertising spending on social networks will also increase, though perhaps not at the exponential rate witnessed in 2006: spending is projected to increase 75% to $ US 1.225 Billion in 2008 (compared with a 155% increase between 2006 and 2007). With the scope of the audience and the scale of the advertising dollars, the social network angle is still very much in play.

Promotion of Luxury Goods as a Wise Investment

The luxury goods should be projected as an investment and not an expense. This is a favorite of real estate companies, and indeed, vacation home purchases in the US are experiencing a miniboom right now.

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* Contributed by: -
Aniruddh Kr. Singh,
Batch of 2007-09,
Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi.
Article posted on December 21, 2008.