Peep Insights: An Interview With Marco Bevolo On The Future Of High End

4) What are some product examples that illustrate the direction of high end?

I would suggest two examples. The first is the “Active Crystals” line by Philips Swarovski, with its heart-shaped USB key: a true re-discovery of the more anthropological meaning of the word: “memory”. Secondly, the “mother of all High End”, the FIAT 500 – the Italian maker’s come back, and a serious challenge to the Mini’s of this segment.

Both products are the expression of authentic emotions, highly curated aesthetics and new ways to apply technology for people. And all of them combine mass appeal with beauty, and high margins with great distribution.

5) What have you personally found most inspiring about this research?

The opportunity to meet and engage in deep conversations with the likes of Markus Langes-Swarovski, Concetta Lanciaux, Mark Dunhill and the more than seventy experts who contributed to the project proved a unique chance to discover the world of luxury and High End, first hand. Secondly, the opportunity to work with our research partners and co-authors, to create new synergies between journalistic interviewing and statistic analysis, in one continuum. To elaborate, the qualitative incorporated a journalistic tone of discussion, though the questionnaires were unified and calibrated as for every Deplhi future study. In continuity, future projections were extracted with the statistic methodology of RDE (Rule Developing Experimentation), with more than 500 qualified respondents. We believe we built a methodological system for future studies that offers the highest degree of dialog between qualitative and quantitative research, but I must let the results speak to that. All in all, a huge project that was indeed worth the high effort required.

Philips Design

For more insights and revelations, visit Peep Insights.