Marie-Cécile Cervellon (EDHEC): “In this turbulent period, brands are compelled to reconsider what 'luxury' truly means”

You will co-publish in May 2026 an ambitious book: “The Sage Handbook of Luxury Brand Management and Marketing” (1). Why this topic, and why now?

The field has reached a moment of both maturity and transformation. After four decades of sustained academic inquiry (2), luxury marketing has evolved into a robust and internationally recognised discipline, supported by a rich body of research that now fuels teaching and innovation in programmes such as the EDHEC MSc in Marketing Management – Luxury Track.

In parallel, the industry itself is facing new challenges. Several established houses are slowing down (3), some markets are seeing more moderate growth than in previous years, and consumers increasingly seek to understand what truly justifies the price of luxury.

The Handbook emerges at this symbolic and strategic crossroads: the 40th anniversary of luxury marketing research, and a turbulent period when brands are compelled to reconsider what “luxury” truly means in a world shaped by sustainability imperatives, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and rapidly shifting consumer values.

Our aim is twofold: to consolidate the cumulative knowledge that has defined luxury brand management as an academic discipline, and to open new frontiers for the next generation of researchers and practitioners. In this sense, the project mirrors the luxury sector itself: an ecosystem that continually innovates while honoring its heritage. The result is a comprehensive, global, and forward-looking handbook that captures both the timeless essence and the ongoing reinvention of luxury.

What makes this handbook truly distinctive is that it brings together 76 leading scholars from every continent, each of whom has specialised in luxury marketing from diverse cultural and theoretical perspectives. This diversity of voices allows for a fruitful confrontation of ideas and approaches, enriching the global understanding of luxury. I’ve had the pleasure to co-edit this handbook with Klaus Heine, Michel Phan, Ian Phau and Eunju Ko, all recognised experts in the field, and this collective work allowed us to turn our dialogue into a coherent and forward-looking narrative.

The book addresses major tensions in the field, second-hand, changing consumer tastes etc. Which challenges do you think remain underestimated today?

Luxury brands are already engaging with circularity (4), but we do not yet fully grasp how profoundly this shift will redefine ownership, exclusivity, and value creation. The rapid growth of second-hand, rental, and upcycling models is transforming the very foundations of luxury consumption.

In some sectors, like the watchmaking, the resale market is increasingly overlapping with primary sales and blurring the traditional hierarchy of value between new and pre-owned pieces. For some brands, it strengthens desirability by underscoring craftsmanship, durability, and enduring value; for others, it reveals a certain saturation of the market that was long driven by logo-centric strategies (5).

In both cases, it raises the question of whether luxury houses should reinvent their business models to regain control over the secondary market (6), not only to protect brand equity, but also to ensure a consistent customer experience and narrative coherence across all touchpoints. 

This structural shift also encourages luxury brands to expand and elevate their service offerings, developing programmes for repair, certification, and refurbishment. These initiatives not only sustain the product’s life cycle but also strengthen the emotional bond between clients and brands (7), reasserting the meaning of care, heritage, and responsibility in luxury.

Another major tension lies in maintaining exclusivity while embracing a more inclusive and accessible vision of luxury. This requires finding a delicate balance between staying true to one’s heritage and keeping strategic consistency for decades, while continuing to nurture creativity and innovation. That balance is also what enables brands to engage both long-standing clients who have been loyal for decades and younger generations seeking more inspiring, authentic, and inclusive expressions of luxury.

The rise of a local competition in markets like China and India remains also widely underestimated. These brands are not new entrants but heirs to centuries-old artisanal traditions, supported by access to skilled craftsmanship, exceptional raw materials, and deep cultural heritage. In China, the rise of the Guochao movement, which blends traditional Chinese aesthetics with modern innovation (8), has been one of the key factors fueling the rapid growth of domestic luxury players. With a long-standing heritage in jade, gold, and gemstone craftsmanship, some jewelry houses, whose origins date back more than 150 years, are redefining modern luxury through cultural symbolism and expressions of national pride. For global luxury brands, this means rethinking their approach as authentic dialogue with cultures that have their own luxury heritage.

Some chapters seem to challenge the very foundations of luxury marketing, and even of luxury itself. Could you tell us more?

Indeed, several contributions in the Handbook deliberately challenge long-held assumptions about how luxury is built, managed, and experienced. One perspective revisits the strategic foundations of luxury brand management itself. Rather than seeing heritage as a static legacy to be preserved, it explores how heritage must be transformed into a living strategic asset that guides creativity and innovation. It argues that the essence of luxury lies not in protecting the past but in activating it, turning origin, craft, and narrative into contemporary relevance.

The exploration of luxury in the digital age pushes this debate further. With the rise of influencer marketing, luxury brands are forced to share their voice with new intermediaries, creators whose authenticity, spontaneity, and cultural resonance challenge the industry’s obsession with control and perfection. This evolution blurs the boundaries between aspiration and accessibility: luxury becomes co-created through digital communities, no longer dictated solely by the brands. The challenge is to remain exclusive without becoming exclusionary, to master a new form of desirability built on proximity, trust, and cultural relevance.

Luxury service research, meanwhile, is still in its infancy and it is one of the most exciting fields of the discipline. Several eminent colleagues contributing to the Handbook explore how service consumption reshapes the very essence of luxury. Traditionally, true luxury experiences were seen as private, discreet, and intimate, an experience reserved for oneself. Yet, as social media has transformed consumption into a performative act, luxury services have become spectacularly visible. What was once a private pleasure is now often shared as public content, turning the hotel suite, the fine dining experience, or the spa retreat into moments of social display. This forces brands to rethink the meaning of service, navigating between curated, “Instagrammable” experiences that maximize visibility and the protection of privacy and discretion, two opposing yet equally legitimate expressions of luxury.

Together, these chapters suggest that luxury today cannot be understood through the old dualisms, exclusivity versus accessibility, heritage versus innovation, or rational value versus emotional meaning. Instead, luxury must be approached as a paradoxical and evolving ecosystem, where tension is not a problem to solve but the very source of renewal.

You have studied the luxury sector, and sustainability, for many years (9). What deep transformations are luxury brands undergoing today?

As I said, luxury today is undergoing a profound transformation that redefines how value is created and sustained across its entire ecosystem. One of the most significant shifts is influenced by extended producer responsibility (10), as brands increasingly take ownership until the very end of their products’ life cycle. This has led to the integration of repair (11), refurbishment, and resale into brand operations, transforming durability and longevity into new sources of desirability.

Equally important is the integration of suppliers, artisans, and local communities into the sustainability narrative (12). For a long time, suppliers were seen as silent partners, invisible links in the chain. Today, they are becoming co-authors of the brand story, embodying its values of craftsmanship, traceability, and responsibility. This shift redefines storytelling itself: authenticity no longer stems solely from heritage or place of origin, but from the relationships that sustain production, the hands, skills, and ecosystems behind every object. Luxury storytelling is evolving from the myth of the creator to a collective narrative of creation.

Yet, there remains a discrepancy between the pioneering sustainability initiatives of luxury brands and consumer perception. Despite ambitious efforts in regenerative sourcing, circular design, and low-impact production, much of this progress remains unseen or poorly understood. Communicating such transformation is uniquely challenging for luxury, a sector that thrives on discretion and mystique. 

The task ahead is to make responsibility both aspirational and credible, demonstrating that true luxury lies not only in rarity and refinement but also in care, continuity, and respect for what endures.

References

(1) The Sage Handbook of Luxury Brand Management and Marketing (May 2026). Co-edited by Klaus Heine, Michel Phan, Marie-Cécile Cervellon, Ian Phau and Eunju Ko

(2) Rathi R, Garg R, Kataria A, Chhikara R. Evolution of luxury marketing landscape: a bibliometric analysis and future directions. J Brand Manag. 2022;29(3):241–57. doi: 10.1057/s41262-022-00273-x. Epub 2022 Feb 2. PMCID: PMC8809247 - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8809247/

(3) Luxury confronts slowdown amid economic headwinds and market disruptions, while industry resilience and strong fundamentals underpin future prospects (June 2025), Bain - https://www.bain.com/about/media-center/press-releases/20252/luxury-confronts-slowdown-amid-economic-headwinds-and-market-disruptions-while-industry-resilience-and-strong-fundamentals-underpin-future-prospects/

(4) Holmqvist, J., Berger, C., De Keyser, A. and Verleye, K. (2025), Luxury in the Circular Economy: An Engagement Journey Perspective. J Consumer Behav, 24: 1486-1497 - https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2460

(5) EMAC 2025 proceedings, Sustainable Luxury: Embracing the Circular Economy - https://proceedings.emac-online.org/index.cfm?abstractid=A2025-124328&Sustainable%20Luxury:%20Embracing%20the%20Circular%20Economy

(6) Linda Lisa Maria Turunen, Marie-Cecile Cervellon, Lindsey Drylie Carey, Selling second-hand luxury: Empowerment and enactment of social roles (2020), Journal of Business Research Volume 116, Pages 474-481 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.11.059

(7) Cervellon, MC., Vigreux, E. (2018). Narrative and Emotional Accounts of Secondhand Luxury Purchases Along the Customer Journey. In: Ryding, D., Henninger, C., Blazquez Cano, M. (eds) Vintage Luxury Fashion. Palgrave Advances in Luxury. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71985-6_6

(8) Luxury consumption in China: a story of dynamic transformation (2025), Michael Antioco, EDHEC Vox - https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/luxury-consumption-in-china-a-story-of-dynamic-transformation

(9) Meet Marie-Cécile Cervellon, a committed marketing professor who explores luxury from every angle (2024) EDHEC Vox - https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/meet-marie-cecile-cervellon-committed-marketing-professor-who-explores-luxury-every-angle

(10) ‘The luxury sector, because it is not driven by volume but by value, can lead the way in circular innovation.’ (2025) Thibaut Joltreau, EDHEC Vox - https://www.edhec.edu/fr/recherche-et-faculte/edhec-vox/thibaut-joltreau-secteur-luxe-pas-soumis-logique-volume-mais-valeur-innovation-circulaire

(11) Pauline Munten, Joëlle Vanhamme, To reduce waste, have it repaired! The quality signaling effect of product repairability (2023) Journal of Business Research, Volume 156 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113457

(12) Cervellon, M.-C., Drylie Carey, L., Diaz Soloaga, P., Alvaro Pereira Correia, P., & Galan-Cubillo, E. (2023). Value creation in the sustainable luxury supply chain. Abstract from 5th Monaco Symposium on Luxury, Monaco, Monaco - https://researchonline.gcu.ac.uk/en/publications/value-creation-in-the-sustainable-luxury-supply-chain