Consumers’ perceptions and attitudes towards Louis Vuitton and their brand ambassadors

Abstract

The objective of this study was to explore consumers’ perceptions and attitudes towards Louis Vuitton and their brand ambassador, BTS. The study was qualitative in nature. An online focus group discussion was used to collect data from eight participants. The participants were purposively selected and a selection criterion was administered to ensure diversity amongst participants. The participants were consumers of Louis Vuitton, aged between 22-28 years old, and were also aware that BTS are Louis Vuitton’s brand ambassador. This study employed a discussion guideline as the research instrument. The luxury value perception framework was used to explore consumers’ perceptions towards Louis Vuitton and the VisCAP model was used to identify the source characteristics of BTS as Louis Vuitton’s brand ambassador. The findings showed that the participants perceived Louis Vuitton to be a brand of good quality and functionality, thus justifying the expensive price of its products. However, participants evaluated Louis Vuitton to be a brand for older consumers. BTS as a brand were perceived to have high significance to participants who were a part of the Army in contrast to participants who were non-Army/K-Pop fans. Lastly, participants evaluated BTS to have limited visibility as Louis Vuitton’s brand ambassador, thus their power to influence was limited. Furthermore, participants evaluated BTS as Louis Vuitton’s brand ambassador to be not credible, this may be due to the lack of congruence between the brand and the boyband.