To the average Joe, the luxury-watch business might seem completely upside down.

The most expensive, in-demand watches these days are solid black, ultrathin timepieces with little or no identifying brand markers. They are designed not to be noticed.

The lower end of the luxury-watch market is filled with chunky, gold and bling-encrusted models that scream for status. Unlike the luxury-car market, where the more expensive cars are designed to attract attention, watches are the reverse. Less costs more.

What gives?

A doctoral student and two professors have been studying luxury goods and their 'brand prominence'-how noticeable a brand or logo is on a product. They tried to figure out what types of consumers want luxury goods with big logos and what types want luxury goods with no logos.

Their finding: truly rich consumers want subtle badges or status, while the lesserwealthy want bigger logos. The research--led by Young Jee Han, a doctoral student in Marketing at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California-breaks the luxury market into four strata of rich consumers.

They are:

Patricians. High in financial means, Patricians are 'principally concerned with associating with other patricians rather than dissociating themselves from other classes of consumers. They use subtle signals because only other patricians can interpret them.' They pay a premium for understatement.

Parvenus. 'Parvenus are affluent-it is not that they cannot afford quieter goods-but they crave status. They are concerned first and foremost with separating or dissociating themselves from the havenots while associating themselves with other haves, both patricians and other parvenus.' Parvenus love the Louis Vuitton logo, the researchers say.

Poseurs. Like Parvenus, Poseurs are 'highly motivated to consume for the sake of status.' Poseurs 'do not possess the financial means to readily afford authenticluxury goods. Yet they want to associate themselves with those they observe and recognize as having the financial means (the parvenus) and dissociate themselves from other less affluent people.' Poseurs like counterfeitluxury goods.

Proletarians. These are less-affluent consumers who also are less-statusconscious. 'Proletarians are simply not driven to consume for the sake of status and either cannot or will not concern themselves with signaling by using status goods. They seek neither to associate with

the upper crust nor to dissociate themselves from others of similarlyhumble means.' They tend to avoid luxury goods altogether.

Which category do you think you fall in? Or is there a fifth category? (Would Warren Buffett be a billionaire proletarian?)