Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for Luxury Cars: an empirical study

Luxury cars represent an important segment of Luxury, and since vehicles are quite complex product with respect to “high-end furniture” “personal luxury goods” or “fine dining” they are quite peculiar from a business perspective. This research aims to understand whether there could be peculiar Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for luxury car manufacturers, and eventually know how they differ from the list of CSFs provided by literature for the general luxury market. Moreover, the study investigate whether there are possible distinct clusters of consumers which show a common pattern in valuing these CSFs. The study has been able to craft a new model where Critical Successful Factors for luxury cars are presented, meaning those characteristics essential for winning competition of other companies that also constitute as differentiators from the mass market vehicles. The validity of the model has has been tested on more than 400 real luxury car owners that confirmed the importance of the attributes included. Further analysis of the collected responses has allowed to identify five key factors that encapsulate the meaning of all the variables introduced. The factors identified are the following: technical aspects, social appeal, brand origin, uniqueness and innovation. Leveraging on these findings, it has been possible to structure the model in a new layout on two levels. On the first one there are only the five key factors and provide a macro perspective, while on the second level there is a group of CSFs for each factor describing luxury car characteristics with an additional level of detail. Interesting implications for academics as well as managers have been discussed, together with limitations and future suggestions for research.