PRESS RELEASE

Stevens, PA August 23, 2004—The further my research takes me into the hearts and minds of today’s consumers, I always end up at the same place: It’s not the thing, but the experience that people crave.

Our research among luxury consumers has shown that experiential luxuries provide them with the ultimate luxury satisfaction, more so than home luxuries or personal luxuries like clothes, cars or jewelry. A new survey we conducted for American Express Platinum Card among even more affluent consumers than we typically field found the exact same thing, with a sizable majority voting for luxury experiences over luxury things.

After a little reflection it may not appear so revolutionary that today’s luxury consumer market has gone experiential. After all the luxury consumers are blessed with high incomes and the ability to buy just about anything their hearts desire. For these highly affluent luxury consumers, material things are easy to acquire and don’t demand a lot of sacrifice. It just makes sense intuitively that the luxury consumers derive their greatest feeling of luxury satisfaction from experiences.

Consumers at every income level, every age range, across the board, favor luxury experiences over home or personal luxuries
Assuming this logic holds, that for the affluent the ready availability of material things makes them value things less and experiences more, then it also intuitively makes sense that people who have less material wealth would tend to find greater happiness in acquiring material possessions rather than experiences. But that isn’t the case. Consumers at every income level, every age range, across the board, favor luxury experiences over home or personal luxuries.

Wanting to see how extensive this experiential market shift is, we ran a nationwide omnibus survey among a representative sample of over 900 consumers 18 years and older. Screened only for their purchase of all three types of luxuries, a personal luxury, a home luxury and an experiential luxury, we asked from which purchase did they gain their greatest personal satisfaction and happiness? We didn’t ask anything about their spending, nor did we define or quantify what their specific luxury purchase might entail. But for the largest percentage of luxury buyers at all income levels, they get their greatest luxury satisfaction from the experience.

In research with consumers at all income levels, I have found that no matter who they are or where they live, no matter how much or little money they make, no matter how much or how little money they spend buying something, they all want the same basic things. They want to feel special. They want to buy the very best quality thing — whatever that is — that they can afford.

At the same time, they want to make sure they paid a good price and didn’t get gouged or pay too much. They want the item they buy to work right, to look good, to last a long time, to perform as expected and as promised. They want to be treated well and with respect by the sales people in the store. Regardless of whether they are spending $1, $10, $100, or $1,000, they all want the same special feeling about their purchase.

This is the underlying motivational dimension of today’s consumer market: Everybody everywhere wants to feel special.

You don’t have to be rich in our society to want to feel special or to actually feel special. Sometimes we turn to the commercial world to get our deep-seated needs for confirmation met in the store, the mall or the restaurant. Everyone wants that same feeling of specialness and we all have some means, no matter how big or how small, to get it. This has huge implications for our businesses in the future.

The lastest issue of Luxury Business is devoted to the new experiential paradigm. Included in this issue is:

· New American Express Platinum Luxury Survey Finds that Experiences -- Not Material Goods -- Matter Most to Affluent

· Why Do Luxury Experiences Provide the Greatest Luxury Satisfaction? New Research out of academia

· Experiences Will Always Trump Things: Luxury Is All About the Fantasy

Click here to order the last copy of the Luxury Business newsletter, as well as the coming six issues, http://www.unitymarketingonline.com/reports2/luxury/luxury2.html

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For more information, visit www.unitymarketingonline.com, or call Pam Danziger at 717-336-1600 Pam@unitymarketingonline.com

  To arrange an interview or other media inquiries contact: Len Stein, Visibility, 914-712-2610; lens@visibilitypr.com