Lifestyle brands are expensive - are the costs justifiable or is it a case of making money at others expense

The cost of making a label into a Brand is huge and involves many factors. Customer buys a brand not as a product because of aspiration. That particular brand has to fit into there lifestyle and image. To take the brand to that height takes investment in terms of money, research, time, manpower, etc.

Most of the lifestyle brands sold through there own retail stores to give same look, image, ambiance and service levels.  Selling to target customers, brands have to go near them in terms of store presence. They open there store in prime markets or malls. Every sought market has a price to lease which is higher then other markets. Staff, cost of interior, quality of the goods etc has to be at par with the brand image; again costly one.

If we calculate there marketing, selling, operating and product cost even at high MRP they does not make much margin as they are constantly investing in future markets, inventories, planning etc.

In addition those brands; which are called as lifestyle brands because customers have accepted there fashion element, offerings and finally there MRP.

From the way look at it.

This is a plain case of demand and supply. The world today is moving towards the "Show and Shine" policy, The fact that these brands are called lifestyle brands, is because hey are not meant for the middle class or classes lower than it. There has always been a certain category of people who want to set them selves apart from the general class by,  the brands they use or the places they Visit, etc. ( and they'd better be expensive so that the general class doesn't find them affordable, of course not ignoring the Quality of the product you get with the brand name and the price)

The Life style brands have identified this need as is only supplying the Demand of this Clas. I dont see how this would translate into making money at other expense. As the target customer for these brands purchases them only b'coz of the Equity and the remium price they charge.

Establishing Brand name involves lot of investment of resources like Time , Money, and Product Research. Many a times stirng of products may fail and after all this 1 product may succeed!

It can test the endurance abilities of the creators both in terms of resources as well as patience! 

Many of the companies who advocate Brand and or demand premium price, now this well.

Hence they always want to have a reasonable return on thier investments in form of premium price and / or Brand Protection.

Imagine if such people were non existent! There would neither be a premium Brand nor the "ME TOO" or "I TOO"  copy cats!

It would have been utter Chaos!!

I see it from a different point of view....Each Brand has its own positioning statement which reflects in its Pricing, Features, Segmentation, Quality etc.....

Also each Product addresses a specific target segment..certain products of lifestyle brands are approachable by Middle class segment however most of others are for niche segment...which is fair. I dont see a issue on the pricing and do not see it as a case of making money on others expense.

I feel that brands are not expensive because the extra money that we pay to buy brands is basically the amount of confidence that we have in that the product/service. After all they charge what we can pay. And we have loyal customers available, who are ready to pay anything for their favorite brand. The only difference between a generic product and a premium brand what I think is often only in the mind of the customer. The trust, the belief makes him to pay for it.