Cold, Calm, and Cashmere : Exploring Motivations For Quiet Luxury Fashion Consumption In Scandinavia

Background: Traditionally, the consumption of luxury fashion has been all about conspicuous consumption, where consumers demonstrate their wealth and status through visible logos and branding. Nowadays, a rising trend towards quiet luxury can be seen around the globe, which is characterized by its subtle and minimalistic branding, and with a focus on quality and timeless design. Various studies on quiet luxury consumers have been conducted, which are mainly focused on major economies like the United States and China, as well as some smaller Asian economies like Vietnam. The Scandinavian region, which is a big luxury market, and where values of modesty and social cohesion are common, represents an underexplored market for quiet luxury fashion. Purpose: The aim of this research is to explore and uncover the motivations of Scandinavian quiet luxury consumers, thus focusing on consumers in Sweden, Denmark and Norway that purchase quiet luxury fashion. By covering the research gap in regional quiet luxury research and the call for research in big luxury markets that practice minimalism, the study contributes to the existing theory and provides new insights about inconspicuous luxury fashion consumption, particularly in Scandinavia. Method: An interpretivist research paradigm with the use of an exploratory research design has been used. Primary data was collected through 18 semi-structured in-depth online interviews with Scandinavian quiet luxury fashion consumers, selected through both purposive and snowball sampling. Hereafter, a thematic analysis was conducted, which was guided by an adapted Self-Determination Theory framework that includes the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, as well as specific quiet luxury motivations related to social sensitivity, which were added based on literature review findings. Conclusion: The results have shown that quiet luxury consumers in Scandinavia are primarily motivated to purchase quiet luxury fashion because of its quality, the ability to differentiate themselves from loud, conspicuous luxury consumers, and to not stand out from the crowd, thus maintaining social cohesion. In contrast to other quiet luxury studies, Scandinavian consumers demonstrated to not be motivated by aspirational motivations, thus not having the desire to chase a certain image or lifestyle. In addition, a new quiet luxury motivation was discovered. This was subsequently named ‘cultural influence’ by the authors, implying the presence of unspoken rules such as ‘Jantelagen’ and ‘Lagom’ in society, which also unconsciously motivates consumers in Scandinavia towards quiet luxury fashion.