Professor Paurav Shukla – Status Consumption: A Journey Through Time & Cultures

Paurav Shukla is a Professor of Luxury Brand Marketing at GCU. His research interests include cross-cultural consumer behaviour, luxury marketing and branding, and marketing in emerging markets. Paurav's career began in industry, and he continues to work hand in hand with industry as a researcher, practitioner and advisor.

He has published many articles in top-tier academic journals, chapters to edited books, and popular accounts of his work have appeared in the Woman's Wear Daily, Luxury Society, Business Week, National Post of Canada and LiveMint Wall Street Journal, among others. He has also delivered corporate training, teaching and consulting assignments for organisations in Europe, Asia and North Africa, and has been actively involved in funded research projects.

Overview of Professorial Lecture
The modern pursuit of personal identity and style through consumption is now widely recognised and is actively encouraged by marketers. In fact, consuming for status has become a defining element of new consumerist societies. However, status directed consumption is not a recent phenomenon. From the extravagance and excesses of ruling elites in earlier societies to the new business maharajas, status directed consumption behaviour has been well observed and documented. However, with the increase in the standard of living beyond wealthy elite, status consumption has percolated through to the masses who are attempting to adopt profligate lifestyles across the world. For example, brands such as LVMH, Gucci and so on have seen phenomenal growth in the last two decades. This lecture attempts a brief review of the historical trends relating to status consumption and presents several studies conducted over the past few years focusing on status consumption in the developed and emerging markets. The studies focus on socio-psychological, brand and situational influences on status consumption across the countries.

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