Current Trends in Luxury Consumption in the US and Developed European Countries (The UK, France and Sweden Cases) Between 2014 and 2015

This paper presents an overview of luxury consumption in the USA, the UK, France and Sweden with the emphasis on economic, cultural and religion aspects and motives of demand for luxury goods where economic and cultural features were found to be important factors at play. To reveal it and to determine modern customer trends in the society a statistic analysis of several luxury markets’ dynamics is conducted. The findings indicated the growth of the amount of premium quality goods consumed between 2014 and 2015 due to the development of e-commerce and brand strategies. However, these purchases have been made mainly in retail stores. Besides irrational demand – Veblen’s effect that exists in luxury markets there are such trends as consumerism, elitism, elitarism and egalitarism in the society that economists studied. Key words: luxury consumption, brands, irrational demand, Veblen’s effect, luxury market, elitism, elitarism, egalitarism, consumerism, cultural aspects.