Luxury Brand Experience In An Omni-Channel Setting With Strategic Online Visual Merchandising Analysis

“Outlet shopping is perhaps luxury’s greatest ploy to get its goods into the hands of anyone and everyone,” (Thomas, Pg. 246). “But outlet shopping is the antithesis of the flagship, the antithesis in fact, of luxury itself.” (Thomas, 2007. Pg. 247) Columnist Karen Heller explained to Thomas after visiting Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in New York, “The clothes were marked down, picked over and repeatedly pawed, the opposite of how they were originally displayed. Their power to enchant seemed minimized, even at a third the price, smashed together like produce in a storage hold.” Thomas explains how luxury merchandise is purely just that, leftover “luxury” products: overproduction. No longer does luxury embody the experience of pampering nor does it signify class and wealth. Some

The technology changes affecting REI are not unique to the company. Nationwide, consumers are ‘wisening up’ to new technologies and they are increasingly demanding expanded services from the companies they do business with. While the dot com revolution of the early 2000’s projected the death of traditional brick-and-mortar stores, the reality today is that customers are demanding comprehensive shopping experiences, experiences that seamlessly integrate online shopping with visits to traditional stores. For example, an REI customer might choose to purchase a pair of La Sportiva Rock Shoes in-store, order them online and pick them up from a store, or purchase online and have the shoes shipped directly to their home. Technology is not just

Lately, there have been issues of brand management on the internet. The new digital tools require a lot of adjustments at the executional stage. According to Chaffey (2000) Internet marketing success depends on the sites interactivity features. Also added that a brand’s presence online should be conceived in a way that is sympathetic to the technology and the environment. Many brands fail in the execution of different features resulting in customers’ needs and expectations not being met says Hewson and Coles (2001) The consumer still looks up to the luxury brands although the bond is presently being evolved beyond the existing “top-down” model. (Okonkowo, 2009) The percentage of online shoppers and the sales of luxury brands have been on a positive growth. In spite of the growth, it’s not clear that what drives the consumers to shop online and whether they would be interested in shopping if attractive online stores were introduced. Therefore, what factors affect consumers to shop online will be examined here. A framework is necessary to develop the complex system and determine these factors, influences and buying behaviors of the consumer. (Perea, 2004) Affluent consumers use the internet as their powerful source of information about the luxury products and it is necessary that they have an online presence.

Look around you in retail, you’ll see people googling reviews and hitting their Social networks to make sense of the retail options they face. For brands, marketing to respond to this new reality is vital, but it’s messy, often hit or miss, and often takes purchasing online and away from in-store. The struggle to digitally merchandise in ways that align with today’s digitally connected consumers and their need to buy with confidence from brands they trust, like and understand is a huge challenge. It’s a challenge that’s not just about physical environments, it’s also physiological, getting brands connected emotionally and intuitively through physical devices and digital media. So like any smart dad, I turned to my in-house marketing gurus; my 23- and 11-year old daughters for

in-store and online retail. Integration of these channels to a more holistic approach is crucial for customer

Fabletics has pushed their high fashion brand that is designed for the active woman that would prefer trendy clothing. The clothing is high quality and rivals clothing that cost much more. Still, Fabletics discovered that they needed to change their marketing strategy in order to attract more customers. Their convenient online retail subscription model proved successful in the beginning. However, Fabletics decided to open physical stores to attract even more targeted customers and sales. Fabletics has always been regarded as a high quality store that provide personal customization to customers. Now, they are using the reverse show room model to turn browsers into purchasers. This

Retailers like J.Crew, Banana Republic and Madewell, being Anthro’s greatest competitors have similar marketing strategies but Anthro’s interactive shopping experience, vibrant visual merchandise and ability to attract customers with their story makes them stand out. J.Crew offers very exclusive and detailed clothing whereas Anthropologie makes a name with its dynamic visuals. Anthropologie’s approach to its stores flips many of the conventions of retail. They do not advertise, but invest in execution by highlighting the product so much as to set a specific mood and create context by using Content Marketing. They have created a consistent brand story, strategic social media platforms, a bubbly blog and have beautiful catalogues displaying their minimalism and

According to Turban and King (2003), internet technology renders retailers an additional channel for branding, transactions and customer relationship management, the adaptation of which may drive down retailers’ transaction costs, and ensuring faster and higher quality of customer interactions, resulting in enlarging the existing markets and consumer base. M&S realizes this and have tried to sell clothing via high street stores as well as via internet though they have experienced cost cutting, rationalisation and management changes in order to revive their business in recent years. Internet technology might enable sustainable competitive advantage, but problems remain on how to physically organize their online retail operations.

Over the last decade, there was an increasing number of bricks-and-mortar retailers shifting onto the web. But now the tables have turned and it is interesting to note that there is a trend that pure play online retailers start to open up physical stores to put in valuable face time with their customers. Bonobos, a menswear brand built on the idea of better-fitting pants, was founded in 2007 on the internet. It was among the pioneers when it extended offline strategy, launching the Bonobos Guide Shop in 2011 to bring personalized, one-to-one service to those wanting to experience the brand in person, and later made its apparel available to customers at Nordstrom. (———>Anonymous 2012, Bonobos and Nordstrom Announce Partnership:

Pulling in the young professional market into its void, Topshop’s online page had served its purpose into letting everyone know that they’re a brand that everyone should look into. The interface used on the website is as exquisite as the items available for purchase, and with

Through early investment and focus, Burberry have established a leading position in digital in Luxury industry, with over 48 million followers and the brand is present on 20 social platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Line and Kakao (Burberry Group, 2017). And The group's digital commerce (burberry.com) services 40 countries in 11 languages through various mobile devices such as mobile, laptop and tablet (Burberry Group, 2017). In 2017, Burberry was ranked Number 1 Digital leader in the ContactLab Digital Competitive Map (Burberry Group, 2017). According to Figure 3, Burberry is best brand in terms of E-commerce strategic reach and third-strongest brand in terms of digital customer experience. According to Figure 4, Burberry obviously improves E-commerce performance from 2015 to 2017. This is because that Burberry redesigned the China site to tailor it more effectively to local preference and behaviour that lead to an increase of around 70% in direct-to-consumer sales (Burberry Group, 2017). This will offer a more personalised digital shopping experience for the customers, both online and by connecting them more effectively to the Burberry’s store. Therefore, the strong customer digital experience and successful E-commerce enable Burberry to reach an extensive customer base and penetrate into global

Within such a coherently growing sector, it has lately been observed that some e-commerce brands have a paradigm shift towards opening physical stores; that is, they have a tendency towards starting up physical stores instead of remaining online only. This system is called “click to brick”. Such hybrid structures, which provide a combination of the digital substructures of online websites and the physical opportunities of retailing like touching and fitting on, are significant steps in terms of

A good labeled with luxury brand, of which is also known as superior brand, opposites to those goods labeled for everyday purpose. And in the meanwhile, it is always associated with fashion factor, as a common sense, when people talk about luxury goods. Apparently, luxury brand is treated as a social indicator in some extends since it becomes one of the most important symbols for social status and life style in worldwide nowadays. In the meanwhile, online shopping continues to a robust growth, with a result of online retail sales contributing to 4.9% of total sales in the first quarter of year 2012, under the phenomena of economic crisis(Bureau, 2012). However, if luxury brand performs a good show for online shopping adoption, especially in China. It is known to us that after year 1978 for the Chinese economic reform, China has occurred an explosive economic increase, having a total number population of 13 million people. With a better life standard, Chinese people are hard to get contented by daily necessities. Instead, they want to show off their social status to some extent with spare money. Therefore, luxury branding goods are one of their choice. Also, it is meaningful to get insights from Chinese local people to better understand their online behaviors towards luxury branding goods, as China is a growing market for international business(Brennan and Wilson, 2012).

LCP consulting indicates, that omni-channel retailing aims to deliver a seamless brand experience for the consumer through all available shopping channels, whether on mobile internet devices, computers, in-store, on television, via catalogues, which is then fulfilled through a fully integrated fulfilment and returns operation. “This is not just about the sales front end, it’s about transforming the whole business” (LCP Consulting, 2015).

The proposed online fashion accessories venture will position itself as a high value, superior deliverer of high quality, hard to find fashion accessories. This market positioning strategy fits right into the target market customers who wish to partake of high quality, luxury fashion products but at value prices. Specifically, this venture will appeal to the independent female who wants to develop her own high fashion identity. The brand will provide an array of fashion accessory products such as mid to high end hand bags, purses, belts, shawls, scarves, ties, handkerchiefs, suspenders, caps, hats, fashion eyewear, and fashion jewelry (e.g. watches, rings, brooches, necklaces, earrings, pendants, etc.). The venture will carry a variety of well-known and established fashion brands and labels, as well emerging or up-and-coming brands not yet found in mainstream fashion.