The Ultimate Luxury: Exploring the Yacht Owner Experience (YOX)
Authors:
Nawal Alawad
Abstract
The market for luxury has been growing consistently. In 2018, the luxury segment represented an estimated $1.2 trillion. Academic research reflects the sector growth as rooted in its solid foundation of luxury goods and brands knowledge. Scholars and managers alike emphasize the ever-increasing importance of the luxury experience for understanding and catering to the luxury customer. However, understanding and exploring what constitutes the luxury experience is a challenge. This is in particularly true of ultra-high net-worth individuals (UHNWI), who only comprise 220,000 individuals with a collective net worth of more than $30 trillion. By robustly stimulating the demand for luxury and, therefore, its growth, this segment has become increasingly important for the luxury industry. Some luxury sectors, such as the market for superyachts – one superyacht sells for an average of $10 million – are exclusively focused on UHNW. Our article’s contribution is four-fold: First, our study is, as far as we know, the first to empirically explore and conceptualize UHNWI customer experiences. Second, we define superyacht owners’ characteristics and overall experiences (YOX). Third, we provide a conceptual foundation for the UHNWI customer experience. Fourth, we discuss our findings’ implications for luxury research and practice, thus providing a future research agenda on UHNW.
