This study tackles the issue of how consumers might perceive luxury products' sustainability-focused communication. We compare consumers' reactions when luxury brands communicate their focus on either product sustainability or product excellence (i.e., a sustainability- vs. excellence-focused communication strategy, respectively). We predict that consumers perceive the former as more atypical for a luxury brand, which renders the communication more effective at enhancing consumers' willingness to buy the brand's products. Across six experiments, we demonstrate that perceived atypicality mediates the effect of luxury product communication strategy on consumers' willingness to buy; that perceived atypicality increases willingness to buy by increasing consumers' perception about the uniqueness of the communication strategy; that the effect of perceived atypicality is stronger for consumers with a higher chronic need for uniqueness; and that the greater effectiveness of a sustainability-focused communication strategy on atypicality and willingness to buy is peculiar to luxury products (i.e., it does not manifest for mass-market products). From a managerial perspective, our findings demonstrate that luxury brands may innovate their communication strategies by leveraging sustainability rather than product excellence.

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可持续奢侈品的非典型性

这项研究解决了消费者如何看待奢侈品以可持续性为重点的交流的问题。我们比较了当奢侈品牌传达他们对产品可持续性或产品卓越性（即分别以可持续性与卓越为中心的传播策略）的关注时消费者的反应。我们预测，消费者认为前者对于奢侈品牌更非典型，这使得沟通更有效地增强消费者购买该品牌产品的意愿。在六个实验中，我们证明了感知的非典型性介导了奢侈品传播策略对消费者购买意愿的影响；感知的非典型性通过增加消费者对传播策略的独特性的感知来增加购买意愿；对于对独特性有较高长期需求的消费者，感知非典型性的影响更大；并且以可持续性为重点的沟通策略在非典型性和购买意愿方面的更大有效性是奢侈品所特有的（即，它不适用于大众市场产品）。从管理的角度来看，我们的研究结果表明，奢侈品牌可以通过利用可持续性而不是卓越的产品来创新他们的传播策略。