Senior, Isabelle Dabler

Author: Isabelle Dabler | Major: International Business Marketing

My name is Isabelle Dabler, and I am a recent graduate of the Honors Business Program in the Sam Walton College of Business. I majored in International Business with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in French. I completed my honors thesis requirements during the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 semesters under the mentorship of Dr. Sarah Jensen from the Sam Walton College of Business Marketing Department. After graduation, I promptly moved back to my hometown, St. Louis, Missouri to begin my career as a Digital Marketer at Beanstalk Web Solutions in Webster, Missouri.

For my honors thesis, I conducted a survey with regard to young consumers in the United States and their current perceptions towards foreign luxury brands such as Hermès, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and more. Furthermore, I analyzed how such perceptions can be influenced through mediums by which survey participants are exposed to. These mediums of exposure included social media, television, movies, and music. To dive even deeper, I prompted participants to determine whether they believe that other people’s perceptions can be influenced by these exposing factors, even if they believe that they themselves cannot be influenced. I asked participants to provide in-depth responses as to how these mediums have the power to influence themselves and/or others.

I chose my honors thesis topic after completing Dr. Sarah Jensen’s Global Marketing course my junior year of college. I thought that her class was extremely interesting, and I wanted to further my knowledge of global marketing through my thesis. This is also how I came to be under the mentorship of Dr. Jensen. She was incredibly knowledgeable and well-versed on the topic and I thought she would be the perfect person to be my mentor for such a topic.

Through my research, one of the most interesting things that I found was that there has been a generational shift in the target market for luxury goods. Previously, the target market for such products was older, more affluent consumers. Today, young consumers have dominated the target market for luxury goods and marketing teams for each brand have had to shift their thinking as they now need to market their products to include a completely different audience. From research I found that young consumers took over the market by purchasing smaller ticket items such as key-rings and makeup/skincare products. However, through my survey I found that young consumers not only purchase the smaller ticket luxury items, but large ticket luxury items as well such as suits, handbags, and even foreign luxury cars. Another major theme from my research and my survey was that the medium with the strongest influencing power on young consumers perceptions towards foreign luxury was social media. There is extensive research that has been done about social media and its power to influence people and that once again rang true in my survey when 80.5% of respondents stated that they believe social media has influenced their perceptions the most.

Researching this topic did not happen without challenges. When you think about all the things we are exposed to every day such as social media, music, movies, and television, it would seem like there would be research out there with regard to how the music some people listen to that is flooded with references towards foreign luxury can influence our perceptions about it. In reality, compared to the extensive research about social media, there was very little research that I could find about music and its influencing power.

Early on in my college experience I knew I wanted to pursue a career in marketing. By completing an honors thesis over a topic that so strongly involves the power of marketing and conducting my own market research survey, I feel as though it has helped strengthen my understanding of marketing. I strongly recommend that students who will soon be starting the process of completing an honors thesis choose a topic that they are not only interested in, but also pertains to their major and future career path.