

Luxury brands have found their way into emerging markets (EM) around the world. While some brands have been successful in one EM, they have not successfully replicated their success in others. We use several methods to examine luxury brand vendors in EM. First, a qualitative study reveals the characteristics of the EM market (market heterogeneity, competition from unbranded products, socio-political sovereignty and resources and infrastructure) with a company’s marketing efforts and financial market freedom over the sale of luxury brands. We experimentally test the results using data from 88 luxury brands and robust econometric analysis. Our results show that market characteristics affect luxury sales and the effects of such market characteristics on sales. The luxury brand is heterogeneous. We also find the significant modulating impact of marketing efforts and financial freedom, so our study expands the literature on luxury and EM brand marketing.