Sustainable Luxury Brands Strategies for Base of the Pyramid Wellbeing

Luxury brands maintain their tremendous market share by producing high-quality products and keeping an aspirational status for non-affluent customers. However, changing social and economic distrust have led to increased need in inclusivity of marginalized sections of the society. Thus, the chapter identifies and explores various innovative strategies implemented by the luxury/premium brands for the BOP communities’ well-being. These strategies transcend the brand-consumer transactional relationships. BOP wellbeing is catered by inclusion of these communities as suppliers and employees to create value for the end consumers, which directly impacts the daily lives of BOP communities. As BOP individuals are involved in the brand’s value creation process, hence, the strategies can go beyond the promotional tactics of the brands. Four different luxury brands are analysed to understand their strategies and tactics for the BOP wellbeing and inclusion. The case analysis focused on the similarities in the strategic level of the brands. FabIndia, Jaipur Rugs, Farm2kitchen, and Sabyasachi are the brands analysed for this chapter. The secondary data collected was integrated with the theories of PERMA (Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment) framework of wellbeing (Ibrahim et al., 2023) and value chain business model (Porter, 1985). The integration of theories with brands’ data helped the research to suggest five distinct strategies for BOP wellbeing. After analysing the secondary data through thematic analysis, the chapter proposes the themes: under Economic Empowerment category the themes are accessibility: building the baseline and blend of cooperative and corporate through collaboration, under Social Development Accessibility category the themes are educating consumers through stories to increase demand, end-to-end communication among stakeholders and lastly, under Skill Development and Sustenance category the theme is preservation and passing on the skills and cultural heritage. The tactics the brands apply are contextual and per the needs of the individuals at the base of the pyramid.