Consumer behavior has been characterized since the beginning of the contemporary and modern change of values by two varied personal attitudes:

This applies on one hand to the attitude of persons that behave as is expected “one” does within a defined social frame. This group of people is dependent in its consumer behavior on what is happening around them. What is in “style” is what characterizes them. Their consumer behavior follows largely what relevant media proclaims to be “in” and “out”, generally on the basis of open or hidden testimonials, exactly what stars and other public personalities favor. They follow trends, when they are told where they lead, they are easily persuaded by change and diversification and don’t really know an attachment to brands. They fly like bees from acacia to primrose and can only be captured for a short period of time through action marketing measures.

The second group of people has a totally contrarian behavior, when it comes to consumption. They live through the force of their own personality, they know what they want and where they want to go, they consume in accordance with their personal lives and they orient themselves on their own self-reflective view of life and not on the view of life of others. In their own consumption behavior their ideology is reflected. By no means are these “backward-looking” or “old-fashioned” people. They are open towards the new and what is going on around them. However, they process –in contrast to those who are attracted to what “one” does – everything new independently and in their own way they fit it quantitatively and qualitatively into the frame of what defines their own personality and conduct of life. From this assessment stems the obvious consequence that the reflected art of shaping one’s life, the way of life, shapes the consumer behavior and in turn, the consumer behavior can only be influenced and steered lastingly through the way of life.

Because this dichotomy plays a big role in our work of developing and implementing strategies for brands and products, we are often asked, if we view lifestyle-driven people critically or maybe even deprecatingly. By no means! We know from experience, that especially through the change of values and the need of many to detach themselves from so-called socio-demographically shaped target groups and to live once again more from the individuality of a human life in a designing capacity and to center everything that involves the art of shaping one’s life and its cultural aspects.

Brands, epitomized by the seven elements we view as prerequisite for a brand personality, namely origin, history, profile, positioning, image, awareness and protection through original values, are like brands where the immediate does not possess a strategic meaning and they should serve the way of life of the people. This also applies to the products these brands represent. Sooner or later they will win over most of those people, who have chosen access to consumption via lifestyle.

From this point-of-view we develop our strategies. We have a firm eye on both groups of people. Our appreciation applies to both of them.

All of this does not have anything to do with luxury consumption. Luxury, as many people over the course of the past fifty years have understood it, we have unmasked a long time ago as undefined term, when it comes to the designation of consumer goods segments. Luxury today is something else than the so-called luxury goods industry likes to communicate. An industry that itself has forsworn the overall concept of luxury by having purses and shoes, clothing and accessories manufactured en masse in Asia, devoted to lifestyle with just a few exceptions. Luxury is something that is in short supply and independent from money, given to mankind by Creation. It is time and a grasp of the appreciation for the world and its treasures, nature and its treasures accessible to everyone. This can’t be traded with. One can only suggest the false expectation of satisfaction.

Products representing something special do to its material or immaterial value and the brands that represented them we call excellence products and brands and we position them in the high-end segment of our model of the market, the Waisted Rectangle© and we see them as the possibility of representing a certain way of life.