Luxury Brand Management

Let me see if I can help:

1) I don't think there's a specific concentration in brand management at most MBA programs. People who go into brand management would probably have a concentration in marketing (possibly mixed with other concentrations).

2) Nobody except you could really say which is better for you. From a job responsibility perspective, luxury brand management is not going to be very different than any other consumer product. The methods you use to market Louis Vuitton handbags will be different than what you'd use to market tissues, but at the end of the day the job of any brand manager is to grow the brand, and the main responsibilities of a brand manager are essentially to develop a strategy on how to grow the brand (including understanding consumer preferences, competitors, etc.) Then being the coordinator of all the internal and external groups (operations, finance, market research, advertising agencies, etc.) to pull off that strategy. Usually, once people decide they want to be a brand manager, they pick an industry based on personal interests. If you're most passionate about luxury goods, then luxury brand management is probably best for you.

3) Same as any other brand management career path. Generally, you'd start as an assistant brand manager, supporting the brand manager for a specific brand or sub-brand and learning the ropes. After a few years you'd be promoted to have personal responsibility for a brand (or potentially a sub-brand of a large brand). A few more years and you'd be responsible for a portfolio of brands, then a larger portfolio or geography, etc. Plus, at a lot of consumer focused companies, top management usually comes from the marketing side of the business. In terms of salaries, that is somewhat affected by which school you attend and which company you're working for, but in general people going into brand management have salaries right around the average post-MBA salary. So for a top school, you would expect the avg. post-MBA brand management salary to be $95,000-$100,000. The Vault guide for marketing careers would be very helpful to help you better understand what brand management jobs are like.

4) I would humbly submit that when it comes to marketing or brand management, Kellogg is the gold standard. Duke (Fuqua) also has a very strong marketing program. That said, any highly ranked MBA program is a pretty good starting point for a brand management career. You should take a look at the different programs' career stats and see how much of the students go into marketing post-MBA, and most MBA rankings also include rankings by academic area so you can see which schools are most highly regarded for marketing. The latest US News MBA specialty rankings for marketing are:

1. Kellogg
2. Wharton
3. Duke (Fuqua)
4. Stanford
5. HBS
6 (tie). Columbia
6 (tie). Chicago (Booth)
8. Michigan (Ross)
9. Berkeley (Haas)
10. UCLA (Anderson)

Hope this helps.