Celebrating Recession in Style: Mainstreaming of Attitudes Toward Luxury Consumption in the Balkans and European Russia
The global luxury market, with its tremendous appeal and unparalleled glamor, increasingly captivates the attention of academicians and retail business analysts. Even though its relatively flexible boundaries make it difficult to evaluate separately from general consumer market shifts, the luxury goods market is experiencing spectacular structural changes, mostly under the pressure of recent recession-inspired negative consumer sentiment and “guilt” feelings. Additionally, there are serious geographical differences among markets and customers in the global luxury segment that deserve special attention. Issues related to the definition of luxury consumption and its structure, motivational drivers, and dynamics in the post-socialist consumer markets of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union are the focus of such attention.