Here are three reasons for positioning your business as the “high-status” choice.
- High-status goods and services, also called luxury and designer goods and services, command higher prices. The cost of manufacturing these goods or providing these services often isn’t significantly more than for other goods and services generally available for the consumer marketplace. A higher price margin positions the business for higher profits with fewer sales, and also provides more resources for marketing and promotion. (Whoever can spend the most to get a customer wins.)
- People who buy high-status goods and services create word-of-mouth marketing by bragging about them to their families and friends.
- When high-profile individuals, such as movie celebrities, use high-status goods and services, they provide valuable publicity to promote more sales. Reporters will write about what they are wearing and include photographs of them in their human interest stories.
Most of us know these high-status brands.
- Fortune 500 companies are expected to hire one of the “Big Four” CPA firms, PwC, KPMG, Deloitte, or E&Y, to audit their financial statements.
- Rolex is the best-known luxury watch. It’s not just a watch, it’s jewelry conveying high status.
- Mercedes is at the top of the luxury automobile list.
- Almost every teenage boy salivates at the thought of owning Air Jordan sneakers.
- Staying at a Disney resort adjacent to one of the Disney amusement parks is a high-status, luxury experience many families stretch to pay for, and tell their friends when they return home.
- High-status, luxury designer labels for clothing and shoes include Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren.
- Stores well-known for their luxury offerings include Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus.
It takes time, effort, money, and endorsements by celebrities and the media to achieve high-status positioning. Achieving that positioning pays high dividends.