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luxury good

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Also known as luxury, luxuries, luxury goods, luxury product, luxury products, upmarket good, superior good

type of desirable good

Wikidata facts

Subclass of
status symbol
Image
Patek-Philippe MG 2586.jpg
Has use
luxury
Show 3 more facts
Commons category
Luxury goods
opposite of
necessity good
has characteristic
income elasticity of demand
Sources (2)

via Wikidata · CC0

~24 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Wine and foie gras In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a product or item or service for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a more significant proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in contrast to necessity goods, where demand increases proportionally less than income. Whereas people consume necessity goods to meet basic survival needs, luxury goods are consumed both for their "intrinsic quality and to signal their wealth and confirm social status." In economics, luxury goods is often used synonymously with superior goods.

Definition, etymology and usage

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “luxury good” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.