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WANT MILLENNIALS TO SHOP WITH YOU? MAYBE LET YOUR KIDS PICK THE MERCHANDISE November 16, 2011 (1 comment)
Merrick, NY—Would you let your teenager choose your next car, especially if you’re planning to shell out $80,000 for it?
As luxury auto brand Lexus recently found out, that’s not such a bizarre question. The ailing auto brand, once the market leader for luxury cars in the United States, is now trailing third behind Mercedes and BMW, and it’s frantically trying to recapture lost market share. This article in USA Today details some of the strategies the brand is using to shed an image that’s lost appeal with younger consumers—a problem shared by some luxury jewelers.
Among its strategies has been hosting a series of dinners at the homes of Lexus owners in high-income areas. There, says the article, they pour the wine and just listen to the owners and their friends talk about cars. What Lexus found out is that middle-age parents who feel they’re perhaps not as cool as they once were—especially men—let their teens choose the car so they can drive something that resonates with the younger generation.
But stodginess isn’t all Lexus has to worry about. Apart from the long interval since its last style makeover, the brand made some serious missteps in allowing its famed concierge-style service to wither, and it shared some of the same dangerous mechanical issues that plagued non-luxury models from parent Toyota. Jewelers, at least, don’t have that problem.
The brand is aggressively using social media, and quite well. One Lexus manager noticed a tweet from a customer in a Starbucks, and called the store to have the barista treat him to a cup of coffee. Of course it resulted in a tweet about how well Lexus was treating him.
But luxury experts interviewed for the article say even if the brand does everything right, it’s still facing a shift in how some consumers define luxury. When even a $14,000 Ford Fiesta offers heated leather seats and Hyundai equips its $22,000 Elantra with both heated leather seats and a backup camera, it raises the bar for luxury brands—a lot.
Jewelers can relate. When online retailers can successfully sell five- and even six-digit diamonds, the in-store experience has to be so superlative as to almost defy description. Meanwhile, if you’re worried about attracting the next generation of jewelry buyers, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take your teen to the next jewelry show and look at product through his or her eyes.
A partial screen shot from Costco.com on November 16, showing some of its one-of-a-kind pieces with five- and six-digit price tags.