Are electronics the new luxury?

The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.

Why we asked: Our monthly foresight magazine, What the Future was started on the premise of asking, a simple but powerful market research prompt: “What’s something that in three or five or ten years you’ll wish you had a trend line on.” This has two immediate effects. First, it gets you to pause and think about the future. That’s always useful. Second, it gives you something you can do now (field the question) and a roadmap for further research. Do you revisit the question? If so or if not, what does that say about your hypothesis and what may or may not be shifting in the world around you as the years go by. 

Now that WTF has been around for almost eight years it’s good to back to some of those questions. Here we revisit a question from our Wealth issue from 2021 about where Americans choose to upgrade our purchases to luxury categories. 

What we found: In the Wealth issue, we noticed something interesting, and those findings haven’t shifted much in the intervening four years – specifically, the top two categories where people say they buy premium, high quality or “luxury” brands. One is kind of obvious, in that it’s a category that to some extent defines luxury: Fragrance and cologne. But the other, electronics, is maybe less intuitive. More than one in four cite is as a category they tend to trade up on – more than automobiles, dining, personal care, clothing and even more than watches and jewelry. 

Sure, electronics and computers can be expensive. They can also in many cases be quite inexpensive/cheap. So that fact that this is where people are choosing to trade-up aligns with our recent post about tech as the new necessity. 

More insights from this wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker:

Affluent Americans more likely to have increased their net worth this year

Most Americans aren't seeing positive news about the economy

The Ipsos Vibe Check: Here's how Americans feel about the government this week