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Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods... And How Companies Create Them (Revised and Updated)
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Sales rank 637,139
Customers rating (based on 38 reviews)
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First published to media acclaim in October 2003, Trading Up revealed how today’s middle-class consumers are seeking higher levels of quality, taste, and aspiration than had ever been possible before—in their choices of cars and clothing, vodka and beer, golf clubs and dolls, and much more. The book identified a major opportunity for entrepreneurs and innovators, managers and marketers, in every category of consumer goods and services. Now Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske have thoroughly revised this BusinessWeek bestseller with new research and new insights into the still- growing phenomenon of trading up.
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| Publisher | Portfolio Hardcover | | Release date | 12/2004 | | Availability | | | Edition | Hardcover |
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Trading Up in a down turn economy?
I have used TU for two years in my Enterprise class for freshmen at our business school. The book is very popular (especially Victoria's Secret and Callaway Golf)with my students. I wish the authors would update the book again with more explanation of TU during hard economic times as well as adding a chapter on the impact of the Internet on trading up. I think the key point of TU is that the middle market (undifferentiated products and service) is being replaced by premium companies "trading down" and discounters "trading up". This theme should be more explicit in the next edition. In addition, more emphasis should be placed on services in the trading up phenomenon, since were heading toward a service economy in the US. I would also add more on the phenomenon through the eyes of global consumers and companies. Overall, I plan to use the book again next semester, along with complementary case studies from HBR.
 Great insights!
I loved this book! It confirmed a lot of what I suspected just from my own habits and those around me. And there's lots of great advice and examples for people trying to get into the growing "new luxury" market.
Good introduction
If you want a basic economic study that has surprising resonance - even prescience - about the current mortgage/credit meltdown, this is the one.
Interesting treatment of how we perceive value
Perhaps the most interestly aspect of this book are its insights through a series of case studies into how people perceive value in the material culture around them. The authors are fascinated by how, given some modest shifts in fit, form and function, some products will be perceived both at the point of sale and on an on-going basis as giving much more satisfaction than others. While the book is intended to be neither exhaustive nor profound, a blending of some of the methods of cultural anthropology, semiotics, and marketing offers perspectives that comparable treatments do not.
New Criteria for Self-Definition
In the original and now in this revised edition, Silverstein and Fiske brilliantly examine "New Luxury": a rapidly developing socio-economic trend as America's middle-market consumers are trading up to "products and services which possess higher levels of quality, taste, and [key word] aspiration than [other] goods in the [same] category but are not so expensive as to be out of reach...[trading up to products and services which] sell at much higher prices than conventional goods and in much higher volumes than traditional luxury goods and, as a result, have soared into previously uncharted territory high above the familiar price-volume demand curve." The significance of this paradigm shift has profound implications for literally anyone who competes each day for consumers' attention, consideration, and (most important of all) business.
Think about it. How to explain the spectacular success of diverse companies such as Starbucks, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Lexus and BMW, Williams-Sonoma and Bed, Bath & Beyond, Restoration Hardware, Victoria's Secret, Prada, Coach, Panera Bread, and Callaway? Granted, most consumers cannot afford to purchase everything from companies such as these but an astonishing number of consumers are not only willing but eager to pay a premium for at least a few of the products offered.
Why? Silverstein and Fiske offer several reasons. New Luxury merchants never underestimate their customer; they shatter the price-volume demand curve; they create a ladder of genuine benefits (i.e. technical, functional, and emotional benefits); they escalate innovation, elevate quality, and deliver a flawless experience; they extend the price range and positioning of the brand; they customize the customer's value chain to deliver on the benefit ladder; they use influence marketing to "seed" success through brand apostles (i.e. "evangelism"); and finally, they continually attack the category like an outsider. What Silverstein and Fiske offer is this volume is a rigorous analysis of those companies which continue to be most successful in the New Luxury economy. They also explain in detail precisely HOW they achieve such success.
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