Want to become a luxury brand manager? Here’s everything you need to know on how to make a successful career.
Brand management plays an important role in building and maintaining a brand’s image in consumer and investor’s eyes. Luxury brand managers’ target consumers are different from most other brand managers as their real challenge is limited customer base. Luxury brands’ demographic is much different than other products and services’ brands. Most luxury brand managers work in the hospitality, fashion and real estate industry. Vacation stays, Hotels and resorts, luxury homes, fashion and jewellery brands take care of their consumers’ privacy, comfort and also give them a certain status symbol.
India’s luxury industry is said to have reached to billions currently and is predicted to rise many folds by 2025. The global market of the hospitality industry is worth more than trillion dollars. This has given rise to demand for solid luxury brand management and efficient managers to spear head these brands.
What is luxury brand management?
Luxury brand management concentrates to make a distinct and unforgettable experience which is complimented with personal service. It is the responsibility of the luxury brand management team to make sure that their choice remains with a certain brand in respective product or service. It is important that a brand’s image remains glorious so as to build customer loyalty. That is why this profession has seen significant growth in the past decade.
There are many universities that offer a master’s programme in Luxury brand management however, there are not many undergraduate degrees. These courses combine learnings around catering, design, fashion and service to build a creative management skill set.
Once you complete you bachelor’s degree, you can pursue a postgraduate course, which is typically for 1.5- 2 years. It affords you a specialisation in a chosen field like design, fashion, and hospitality and such.
An eye for excellence, knowing the pulse of the consumers, current trends, social media knowledge, knowledge of other lifestyle sectors and brands etc – these are the some of the skills you will become proficient in. To become a successful luxury brand manager, some of the essential characteristics of luxury brand managers are as follows, you need to constantly keep up with the trends. You need to strike a balance between creativity and business and consistently strive to value add to the brand value by strategizing, organizing and implementing plans. You also need to protect the brand’s image, value and its heritage. Some more responsibilities that a brand management team undertakes include, market research, implementation of marketing campaigns, product distribution, brand planning, collaborations and such. luxury brand managers need to supervise these activities to successfully build the brand identity. It also helps to be good with soft skills as a luxury brand manager needs to be polite, patient, have leadership skills, passionate, innovative and good at networking.
There are not many colleges in India that offer degrees in it, however, there are some good educational institutes in countries like Switzerland that offer well-structured courses in luxury brand management. Switzerland contributes the biggest share in the world hospitality education sector. Seven of the hospitality schools of Switzerland come under the umbrella of top 10 hospitality schools in the world. A degree from a Swiss institute will
give you a perfect kick-start in the world of luxury brand.