The Emperor Has No Clothes – Maybe Because They’re Not Sold Online

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Google recently told MarketingDaily that 94% of millionaires made a luxury purchase online in the last six months and that 56% of these consumers actually prefer shopping at a retailer’s Web site to visiting a store. So going into the session, “The Emperor Has No Clothes: The Affluent Consumer Online – A Market in Search of a Product?”, we might expect a discussion focused around luxury brands’ action plans to integrate e-commerce into what today are typically informational branded website experiences.

Well, if our expectation was that luxury brands are moving online to satisfy the seemingly overwhelming demand, we might be shocked to hear that many are, oddly, resistant to online commerce. Thomas Becker, CEO of Thom Browne, said, “If Thom Browne had his way, I think we’d all still be sending memos to each other on our typewriters. Everything from how we make our clothes to how our shoes are made – on a bench. It’s straight out of the 50’s. Everything about our process is similar to that.”

Browne is not alone in his hesitation on the future of luxury brand e-commerce. David Wish, Razorfish Partner, added, “there’s always been a feeling that I don’t know if our customers want to buy on the web.

Wish echoes a line of thought luxury brands have upheld for some time – the importance of brand integrity, and that at least a portion of the overall price accounts for the retail experience. Luxury brands have historically found it difficult to recreate the retail experience online and thus many have shied away from offering e-commerce options.

Moreover, brands find maintaining their brand identity has new challenges in the online world, where social media tools have enabled consumers to connect and discuss brands at their leisure and search engines have archived and publicized these discussions for all time. As Bruce Rogers commented, “The idea that you can control your brand was always a myth. Going back to seminal work by Trout, the brand exists in the minds of the customers; not in the advertising agency…” or any other interested party for that matter. The consumer is king in deciding whether or not a brand lives or dies and whether a brand is perceived as luxurious or cheap commodity.

When you add up the commentary from the panelists; that the luxury consumer is more stretched on time than on money, that the luxury product marketers can’t control their brands, that almost all millionaires are shopping online, one would think the logical conclusion would be stampede towards online media. This is not the case. The same luxury consumer continues to search for luxury brands through random e-retailers and gray market sellers; neither provides consistent branding when selling their luxury products.

Eli Singer, CEO of WebCollage explains, “Chanel is one of our customers. If you go to Chanel’s site, you get a great brand experience. If you go to a typical retailer site, and you find Chanel, you get a general product catalog representation. If you’re Chanel, you want to cry from an experience like that. The experience is completely butchered.”

Despite the blood and tears – we’ll have to keep looking to eBay for our Chanel for now.

Not for long!

By Jenna Ryan on 2008 11 19

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