Sorry for The Lack of Experience
Two things will stop me from buying my first Rolex online, the first is the overall experience and treatment I would like to receive when I enter a Rolex store, and the second is the 30K that I will never be able to save! For now, I’ll skip the second reason and focus on the first.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a full supporter of e-commerce and the convenience it has made possible. I often buy some clothes online because I know for a fact that my choices are wider, and the prices are cheaper. For example, a while back I went to a Foot Locker store to buy a pair of Nike shoes that I found online. Having checked the website before going to the actual store, I was surprised that although the shoe was on sale through the website, the actual store was selling it at full price. From that moment on I decided to always look for an item online before making a trip to the store.
However, it’s not the same when buying a luxury brand because the overall experience adds value to the product one is buying. Take Hermes for instance and imagine buying a Hermes belt online instead of visiting the branch on the Rue de Sevres in Paris. Have you been to it?
From the second you walk in you feel special. The flagship store used to be a pool building but is now an iconic store for a high-end retailer. Heaps of people are walking in all directions, taking photos, looking at, touching, smelling and trying on the product they like. By creating a “museum-like” experience the brand has attracted thousands of tourists from all around the world and has created an unforgettable experience for luxury brand enthusiasts.
Link to Hermes (Rue de Sevres): https://en.parisinfo.com/shopping-paris/90977/Hermes-rue-de-Sevres
ALI’S Experience
In my one on one interview with Ali Chahine who has an MBA in Luxury Brand Management and is currently working in Saudi Arabia I confirmed that experience is king when it comes to luxury retail. Ali who was raised in the United Kingdom has been passionate about luxury brands from his teenage years. He believes a man’s belt, shoes and watch say so much about him. Therefore, he invests most of his time and money on trying to find unique products that reflect his personality.
When asked about the experience of walking into a luxury store, Ali’s said “I want to try it on, make sure it’s the right fit and enjoy the experience. I either know what I’m looking for and go straight to the shop or I get inspired by one of the influencers that I’m following and then search online for the item and finally go to the shop.”
Ali told me a bit about what he enjoys the most “I expect to get a cup of coffee and some chocolate while the salesman is going the extra mile to find the right product for me”. It’s that level of attention one receives bundled up with the overall ambiance of the store that makes the experience so unique.
Mass brands, on the contrary, have made their customer's life easier and made shopping a lot more convenient by relying on e-commerce. However, when it comes to luxury brands, convenience is not a subject that the customer is looking for. I mean of course to a certain degree convenience is important but personalized and individualized treatment is more important here.
EXPERIENTIAL Everything
Luxury brands like Gucci and Balmain have been focusing so much on experiential marketing. When they introduced AR and VR into their culture, they wanted to be leaders in Digital Marketing. “The yearning for individualization is being powered by Gen Z” said Nigam and Rosenbaum and for that brands are constantly trying to find ways to appeal to a new and existing generation to be able to deliver luxury brands to “consumers exactly where they are, when they want it and most importantly how they want it”.
Another example of how luxury brands integrated experiential marketing with digital marketing is when Gucci tested out its first avatar. Gucci-dressed avatars were shared across social media platforms and users were able click the item the avatar was wearing and was redirected to the store. As interesting and fun as it sounds but all those efforts to use digital as a way to enhance the experience of luxury shopping is still so virtual and lacks the emotional and physical appeal to it.
While e-commerce has undoubtedly made shopping “a click away”, luxury brands will have to provide something more than what mass brands are providing and it will always be the individualistic experience. While digital has made it possible to somehow figure out or imagine how a product will look like on a person through placing it on an avatar or through AR & VR, the question that remains is will digital ever be able to fully replace the entire experience of walking into your favorite Gucci store and be greeted the way you expect?
Sources:
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Business Strategy. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DBS.
