Motivation and the fashion consumer

Understanding what motivates consumers to think, feel and act in certain ways is crucial for fashion communicators wishing to affect consumers’ beliefs and behaviours towards their brands. By applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to the luxury fashion industry context, this chapter explains how fashion brand communicators understand what motivates consumers and how they respond to consumers’ physiological, social and psychological needs. It includes an overview of audience segmentation tools and other methods used by fashion communication practitioners to enhance their understandings of consumers, and their wants and needs. It concludes with a case study showing how the luxury fashion house Dior uses art to invoke a process of “intensive brand ratification and authenticity building” ( Bai, 2017 : 213), in line with luxury consumers’ motivation towards esteem and self-actualisation, at the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy.