I wear Prada, because I want to.

Abstract

Previous studies on luxury consumption indicated that women may use luxury consumption as a self-promotion strategy during within-sex competitions, as these luxuries improve their advantages against same sex rivals for mates. Many of these studies rely on costly signalling and intra-sexual competition theory, and they suggest female intra-sexual competition in a mate attraction context triggers women’s spending on luxury products. The focus of this paper is to understand the gender-related motivations, specifically for female consumers in the luxury market and to compare and contrast the new findings with the previous studies. The finding of this study demonstrates other motives in female luxury consumer behaviour rather than relationship, self-enhancement and competition.