Consumers’ perceptions of store location effect on the status of luxury, non-luxury, and unknown apparel brands

When apparel brand managers attempt to raise their brand value, store location status is their major concern since they consider it one way to influence their brand value. This research focuses on the status of shopping malls and adjacent stores as store location factors and assesses their effects on perceived brand status. In this research, two consumer surveys on apparel brands with different characteristics (luxury, non-luxury, and unknown brands) were conducted in Japan and the variation of perceived brand status and attractiveness in different store location frames was analyzed. The result of an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) suggests store location influences perceived brand status and attractiveness of luxury brands more than in the case of non-luxury ones. Moreover, store location status is confirmed to influence unknown brands only very slightly. This result implies difficulties in raising the status of non-luxury and unknown brands just by constructing their stores in high-status locations following the luxury strategy.