Luxury Brands Should Act Cold and Distant

Luxury brands should be arrogant.

This entitlement and superiority increases desire for luxury brands.

How to Apply

• Avoid Smiling. Smiling reduces the appeal of luxury images (Zhu et al., 2022).

• Remain Aloof on Social Media. Ignore comments, etc. Researchers recommend selective engagement by replying infrequently and reserving interactions with celebrities (Park et al., 2020). Here are tweets from luxury accounts. Most of them are showing celebrities wearing the brand:

• Avoid Emojis or Exclamations. Friendliness backfires for luxury brands (Li & Shin, 2022).
• Lower the Temperature in Stores. Unfriendly people are described as “cold” because social distance is intertwined with physical warmth in our brain. Interestingly, customers prefer luxury brands in cold environments because of this neural wiring (Park & Hadi, 2020).

• Chu, X. Y., Chang, C. T., & Lee, A. Y. (2021). Values created from far and near: Influence of spatial distance on brand evaluation. Journal of Marketing, 85(6), 162-175.
• Li, Y., & Shin, H. (2022). Should a luxury Brand's Chatbot use emoticons? Impact on brand status. Journal of Consumer Behaviour.
• Park, J., & Hadi, R. (2020). Shivering for status: When cold temperatures increase product evaluation. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30(2), 314-328.
• Park, M., Im, H., & Kim, H. Y. (2020). “You are too friendly!” The negative effects of social media marketing on value perceptions of luxury fashion brands. Journal of Business Research, 117, 529-542.
• Zhu, H., Zhou, Y., Wu, Y., & Wang, X. (2022). To smile or not to smile: The role of facial expression valence on mundane and luxury products premiumness. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 65, 102861.