Research of Relationship between Jewelry and Luxury Goods

The relationship between jewelry and luxury goods is unrevealed, and people haven't reached agreement whether jewelry properties, such as economic and aesthetic value, rarity and durability, endow jewelry with the luxury priorities.In this paper, luxury goods were studied from multiple dimensions to clarify the definition and essential attributes.Comparison between jewelry and luxury goods was made to find out their relationship, which enhanced understanding of jewelry product characteristics, laid theoretical foundation for the industrial research and furthermore, provided guideline to the jewelry marketing.Although luxury goods had been studied from different aspects, it was proposed that five dimensions were extremely important, namely economic, sociological, consumer-behavioral, marketing strategy and luxury management dimensions.The authors put forward a five-dimension model (invisible economic value, consumption expectation, luxury marketing strategy, experience of priority and emotion and social function), or ICLES model of luxury goods and applied it to comparison of jewelry and luxury goods and discussed the special attributes of jewelry.The comparison in invisible economic value dimension shows that the value of jewelry is high and satisfies people's aesthetic demand, which distinguishes them from ordinary commodities.Besides, the previous research shows that the income elasticity of jewelry con-sumption is greater than 1, which indicates the commodities of jewelry fulfill consumers' high level need.Both luxury goods and jewelry are rare or inherently relatively, due to natural resource constraint or control.It is found that jewelry have properties resembling the luxury goods, which leaves a positive impression on consumers.Social dimension showed that with the flush of jewelry in the market, the price decreases, which is harmful to their consumption social function.When people tend to believe the cheap jewelry will damage their social image in the public, jewelry will be away from core luxury area.Comparisons from dimension of experience of priority and emotion show that jewelry are precious and rare, howevere consumers are not ready to perceive their value and priority they should have and consumption is influenced.Precious jewelry of top quality, design and high price can offer consumers aunique experience and special satisfaction, and enterprises should focus on design and customers' needs.However, Chinese jewelry enterprises are still weak in those aspects. Luxury marketing strategy dimension analysis reveals that jewelry enterprises should elevate the product design and marketing strategy to cover more jewelry in the core luxury goods area.Dimension of consumption expectation from a luxury specialty's perspective, shows that customers expect fabulous experience of consumption, with combination of quality, emotion, culture, rarity, design and technique.Jewelry possess many special characteristics, such as rarity, nature, long time of formation and culture endowed by countries.All those form a stable consumption expectation and ensure customers' interest.Jewelry have properties resembling luxury goods in certain aspects, which is an advantage of entering core luxury goods area. Through the comparison between jewelry and luxury goods, it is found that three characteristics of jewelry, namely beauty, durability and rarity can have corresponding parts in luxury goods.However, to majority of jewelry, they do not have the sufficient conditions to enter core luxury goods zone.Marketers should work around five dimensions to elevate their characteristics, which will fulfill customers' need in term of luxury goods' consumption. Considering the reality of Chinese jewelry market, this paper proposes some suggestions to avoid the bottle neck of development.First, jewelry enterprises should research and develop new products to infuse artistic elements into them.Second, enterprises should employ rich resource of Chinese culture, craftsmanship, old-trade-name etc, to create more added value.Third, enterprises should re-position themselves, launch the luxury strategy and allocate the resources effectively to create luxury brand equity, which is crucial for enterprises to achieve sustainable development.