Abstract:

In social interactions, luxury goods usually work as signal revealing the users’ status. In a market with both authentic luxury and counterfeit goods, how the authenticity of luxury goods is perceived by others is an important issue not only for consumers, but also for producers and the whole society as well. Previous studies more focus on the luxury (or counterfeit) user, who sends out luxury information, to study the motivation of luxury consumption. However, how other consumers recode and interpret the luxury information gets inconsiderable less attention, this issue deciding whether and how the luxury goods user’s social motivation can come true. This article aims to explore how the information of luxury goods is interpreted by other consumers and then become influential. The authors find out that the perception of authenticity of luxury goods is a complicated process in which place scheme, character scheme, incident scheme and product scheme can all influence customers’ perception. Through exploratory and empirical study, this paper formed a theoretical model to explain customers’ perception of authenticity of luxury goods.

Key words: Luxthenticity')">

Luxthenticity, Luxury goods, Cognitive Scheme, Familiarity