Identification and Motivation of Participants for Luxury Consumer Surveys

Luxury consumer behaviour is still a relatively new area of research, one that relies in large part on paid surveys and especially on student samples. However, it is questionable if moderately paid surveys really can attract wealthy heirs or busy managers or if students can imagine themselves as experienced luxury consumers. In addition, many researchers hesitate to target luxury consumers. One reason is the current business literature showing a lack of understanding as to what in fact constitutes a "luxury consumer", resulting in confusion as to how to distinguish luxury from non-luxury consumers and ultimately, how to identify luxury consumers for empirical studies. What is more, this particular target group is notoriously hard to reach and difficult to persuade to participate in any study. These problems illustrate the need to analyse the means of identification and motivation of participants especially for luxury consumer surveys (LCS). As a prerequisite, the paper introduces a concept of luxury including a definition of luxury products, brands and consumers. The second section presents a categorization of the major research objectives, target groups, and identification methods for LCS based on a literature analysis of pre-existing LCS. The third section discusses the suitability of the methods of participant motivation, which suggests thinking about some non-monetary incentives that could convince luxury consumers to participate in a survey also in their own interest. As this idea coincides with the notion of viral marketing, it seems promising to adapt this concept for viral participant acquisition (VPA). Consequently, the fourth section presents a case study of a recent LCS that provides some learning experiences about the implementation of VPA.