Luxury Lifestyle Pre- and Post-Coronavirus: A Global Perspective - Essay Sample

Introduction

Individuals all over the world hope for a comfortable life. People go to work in order to get money which will enable them afford commodities that will make their lives comfortable. A big number of this commodities happens to be luxurious items. Different individuals across the globe have different meanings of luxury as a lifestyle. However, the spread of the coronavirus has affected most of the luxurious life. This paper aims at investigating the different views of luxury and how coronavirus has affected luxurious products.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Question One

A right attitude is an assurance of a healthy lifestyle. A lifestyle can be described as how an individual stay. Money is a great determiner of an individual's lifestyle. With money, one can have almost every material thing. It is with this that one can live a luxurious life. Though the meaning of luxury can differ from person to person, everyone agrees that money is essential and demonstrates luxury in several different ways. In other instances, people view luxury through an individual's lifestyle. In this instance, partying is the main factor. Several individuals spend most of their time partying and touring different exciting locations. This kind of life requires a lot of money to be able to maintain it-however, individual needs not to party to survive. A person can go for years without a single party, and life will still go on. Therefore, partying and traveling are not essential activities, and people practicing them are termed as living a luxurious lifestyle.

Every person has their definition of luxury. According to the oxford dictionary (DK Pub, 2003), luxury is a state of great comfort or elegance, especially when involving enormous expenses. In the USA, most people define luxury as having the latest iPhone model, all expensive vehicles that are of the latest models, not forgetting huge homes. That is how most individuals define luxury. However, as earlier indicated, the acting of prioritizing items and products that are not basic. Therefore, most individual who owns expensive things believes that they live a simple but more in-depth analysis of their lifestyle will show that all they have are items that are not essential.

Luxury is mostly associated with money and other material things. The ability to be up to date with all the fashion trends, dressing in designer clothes, and using expensive goods is luxury. This is why luxury is associated with money. To be luxurious, an individual ought to have money. Although to other people, luxury does not necessarily mean material things, most people have tied luxury to cash, and therefore luxury is having the best that life can offer. According to Gummerus et al. (2019, p. 12), indulgence is not attached to offerings like brands or services; it is connected to experiences, or activities like shopping or getting facial treatments and improvements done using makeup products. Summarily, the meaning of luxury depends on an individual and how they view it.

Luxurious goods are those that make life look so smooth and sweet, and they are not considered as essential. People buy luxury brand items intending to satisfy their various needs and desires. These motives include the desire to portray a specific social class, communicate the desired self-image and provide self-concept reinforcement, visible proof that the consumer can afford higher-priced goods (Nwankwo et al. 2014, p. 3). With luxury goods, people feel different and, at times, even more, important than others. Some consumers buy the products to fit in a particular social class, others buy them just because they can, others to boost their worth and others to portray an individual personality. Luxury goods are known to look good and make life look sweeter and more enjoyable. An iPhone, for instance, can do so many things that an Android phone cannot do, and for the functions that can be done by both, for instance, taking pictures, an iPhone performs better. When it comes to fashion, someone wearing a Luis Vuitton hoodie seems to look better than someone wearing a regular hoodie. In some cases, wearing designer clothes or using other luxurious goods makes people view one as a remarkable person, and that goes a long way in boosting one's self-esteem. These are some of the reasons why everyone struggles to be able to afford these luxury goods and sees them as necessary.

Indulging in luxurious experiences is every human's desire. Most individuals want to go on the Cruise through the Nile River, and also a romantic getaway to the Maldives and so many other luxurious places. Apart from traveling, there are activities like getting a facial or going shopping for expensive jewelry and cars. Not everyone that gets the opportunity to experience this expensive lifestyle and this is why it may seem essential for individuals to indulge in these experiences just to know how it feels. Luxury experiences are much more than just a perceived extension of consumer selves but rather an opportunity to live different lives, reflected by symbolic consumption indulgence in particular moments and activities, moments of harmony, self- enhancement, and self-transcendence (Hemetsberger et al., 2012, p.7). Several people crave for that chance to live differently, to have special moments. Individuals work hard because they need money to enable them to have an expensive life mentioned. Luxurious lives look interesting, unlike healthy lives. The ability to do and go any destination of choice is what everyone hopes for, to experience those moments of luxury when enacting different selves, whether unexpectedly or purposefully.

Living the most luxurious lives is the most significant way people show their status. Many wealthy people buy luxurious goods and do pleasurable activities to show their prosperous state. All their accomplishments demonstrate their success. They hand their certificates and degrees on walls, and they build companies, they make considerable contributions in fundraisers and give speeches on how to be like them. They use their wealth and success to gain power and use it to please themselves. These individuals travel to the best world's destinations, eat fancy foods, and dress in designer clothes. Some even have reality shows on television like the Kardashians. Wealthy people go for family holidays and take their loved ones for getaways in luxurious places and go cruising. They also buy expensive cars and live in substantial luxurious mansions where they have many employees working for them. Many wealthy people do not do things on their own, and they pay people to do them on their behalf. This is why most children born into wealthy families do not know how to do basic chores simply because they have never had to do them. Wealthy and successful people show their status by living the best and most luxurious lives.

Everyone has their definition of luxury though many people define it as being able to live in comfort with everything needed being readily available. Luxurious goods seem essential because they are believed to make life easier and sweeter. People have different reasons for purchasing luxurious products. Indulging in luxurious experiences is every human's desire. Luxury experiences when people momentarily become different and live differently for a moment are of great importance. Wealthy and successful people in society show their status by living the most luxurious lives. People have different views on what luxury is and how to live luxurious lives. Therefore, people should avoid living like others and do what other individuals do if that is not what luxury means to them.

Luxury itself is a special industry that is not easily equated to another field of production. Luxury products have special and precise features that, at times, require specialized advertisement and promotions to sensitize the public on the importance of the products. However, other items require no publication since the value they have makes them high in demand. In the USA, the luxury industry keeps growing or remains constant despite any economic crises. It is reported that the worldwide luxury consumers by the end of 2012 were at 330 million in comparison to 1995, where it was 90 million (Dauriz, L. & Tochtermann, T., 2013).

Summarily, luxury lifestyle and the purchase of luxurious products are slowly being made an essential thing as most individuals have made it a habit and cannot live without them. However, caution should be taken when buying and using these commodities as some of them may lead to health complications due to the long-term usage side effects.

Question Two

The situation with the coronavirus is difficult and may get worse. It will significantly affect the daily activities of different individuals. Its impacts will majorly jeopardize the financial status of different people, and the implications will be felt even in the social lives' aspects (Andres V et al., 2020). Although the virus has not badly hit some countries, all nations will face significant economic fallbacks, which will be reflected in everyone's financial status due to lockdowns and quarantine, which have led to people not going to work.

Coronavirus will cause significant losses in the whole world. These losses will derail development and growth. Coronavirus will cause damages of all kinds, starting with human lives, jobs, money, and so many more. The disease will take much endurance, and quarantine will force people not to work, which will damage the economy (Andres V et al., 2020). Lives will also be lost due to hunger if it lasts longer than expected. Staying at home will lead to a lot of people not exercising, therefore, increasing lifestyle diseases. Social distancing will make a lot of people unsocial. Research on different medical issues has come to a stop causing a big derail in the health sector. Various governments across the world are straining of medical staff and personnel since the medics are few, and the multitude to be taken care of is significant. Stopping of sports events has reduced social interactions since most people only met to talk about sports or during sports events. Families have been torn apart due to abuse or brought together because they bonded over this period. All these will cause a lot of strains on the country as it tries to heal from the pandemic.

Fashion and luxury sales are expected to drop drastically due to the virus. The reduced transactions will, in turn, affect the expected revenues that are generally collected from the sales. It is estimated that there will be a total drop of between 25 percent and 35 percent. Additionally, the sale of luxurious items like watches and jewelry is forecast to fall to between $450bn to $ 650bn in respect to the purchases that were made in 2019. This effect will be experienced differently in different states of the USA due to the various economic capabilities. Some areas heavily rely on tourists who come to buy products like watches and jewelry (Lauren Indvik, 2020). These kinds of domains are the ones that will be struck by this virus due to the restrictions that have been put in place by the authorities to help curb and control the spread of coronavirus.

In the USA, 54% of consumers are no longer interested in the purchase of luxurious items. The focus has since the start of the pandemic shifted to the procurement and stocking of things that are considered to be essential for survival during this pandemic period (Richard Carufel, 2020). Locations where these items have also changed since individuals no longer want to be in crowded areas. However, online purchases of commodities have increased by 31 percent, and visits to the local grocery stores increased by 28% (Richard Carufel, 2020). These trends have benefited products that are not luxurious.

Social and economic changes will impact the societal values of di...