Strategic collaborations: how luxury fashion brands leverage on inter-industry partnerships to sell a lifestyle

Resumo

This thesis investigates how luxury fashion brands strategically employ inter-industry collaborations to construct aspirational lifestyles and reinforce symbolic value, guided by the central research question of how these partnerships strengthen aspirational positioning and communicate lifestyle meanings. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining a theoretical foundation grounded in luxury branding, symbolic consumption, and lifestyle marketing with empirical analysis composed of three case studies and qualitative and quantitative research. Findings indicate that consumers engage most strongly with collaborations that are emotionally resonant, value-driven, and symbolically rich. Overall, the results demonstrate that inter-industry collaborations function as strategic tools for emotional branding, cultural positioning, and lifestyle storytelling, allowing luxury brands to operate within broader symbolic ecosystems, preserve exclusivity, and enhance desirability while remaining aligned with contemporary consumer expectations.