Creating a Seamless Experience for Luxury Consumers Integrating Online and Offline Communication
For a long time, luxury companies regarded digital channels and media as incompatible with the kind of experience they intended to offer their customers (Heine and Berghaus 2014). This lack of interest was strongly related to the assumption that digital m
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long time, luxury companies regarded digital channels and media as incompatible with the kind of experience they intended to offer their customers (Heine and Berghaus 2014). This lack of interest was strongly related to the assumption that digital marketing was aimed at mass consumption, while luxury consumers favoured a personal touch in their purchases, along with the rich and stimulating experience offered by high-street boutiques and mono-brand stores (Dell’Olmo et al. 2003). In more general terms, e-commerce sites, search engines and social media were perceived as playing with a set of rules at odds with what luxury brands stand for: rich symbolic engagement for a small social elite eager Valeria Pelleschi co-authored the parts on social media platforms, blogs and content sites and digital public relations.
F.M. Pini (*) MIP, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] V. Pelleschi MIP, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2017 E. Rigaud-Lacresse, F.M. Pini (eds.), New Luxury Management, Palgrave Advances in Luxury, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41727-1_12
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to experience a multisensory exposure to the brand and its products. In an effort to meet the expectations of high net worth segments, luxury brand strategies were characterized by top-down approaches and social prescription (Kapferer and Bastien 2009). For example, brands such as Chanel or Louis Vuitton originally established their identity and brand awareness through a small community of fans within the showbiz or fashion industries. Back when luxury was supposed to be the preserve of the social elite, this goal was typically accomplished through face-to-face interaction and personalized care. This approach to value creation generated a natural distrust of all crowdsourcing and co-creative practices—the backbone of digital media jargon—among luxury companies. Only in recent years have luxury brands approached digital channels from a different perspective and grasped the opportunities offered by the new touchpoints for enriching customer experiences and supporting rich and complex brand narratives. According to recent surveys by McKinsey (Dauriz et al. 2014), e-commerce still accounts for a mere 4 % of luxury sales, but this is only one aspect of the different opportunities offered by a multichannel approach. There are many ways through which digital channels can influence luxury consumer behaviour, and the stage of purchase might not be the most significant one. Online search activity, as well as engagement with social media contents and participation in online groups and communities affect consumers’ perception and motivation towards brands and products and may eventually lead to an offline purchase. The ubiquitous presence of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets allows customers to interact with digital contents even while shopping in physical retail stores, creating a completely new way of influencing or driving purchases in brick and mortar out
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