Are e-commerce and luxury oxymorons? An omnichannel-first perspective

In the past years, I’ve often had conversations about e-commerce being contradictory to luxury, especially in France. Often, these have been accompanied by comments such as:

  • How could you recreate a detail-rich in-store experience online?

  • How can you offer a glass of champagne to a customer online? 

  • Isn’t human contact and attention one of the fundamentals of luxury and therefore contradictory to e-commerce?

  • You can’t smell perfume online

  • You can’t feel the luxurious fabric of a 3 000 € dress online

  • You can’t virtually try on a product online like you could in-store

And while I understand where these questions come from, they are missing the main point. E-commerce has never been about replacing the in-store experience, especially in luxury. Instead, it’s about offering a supporting brand platform to customers who spend more and more time on their devices and across different geography and time zones.

Even during the pandemic, it was expected that physical stores would open again and that the concept of e-commerce would evolve past being the only store that remained open in a time of crisis.

The pandemic may have had many luxury houses rethink their e-commerce strategy out of need since access to physical stores and brand touchpoints was strongly limited. It also pushed brands to modernize their websites and digital platforms and think of ways to offer the immersive experience of a luxury brand online.

According to eCommerceDB, the online market growth of the luxury goods market was significantly larger than that of the non-luxury segment between 2020 and 2022. This makes sense, as many luxury houses did not necessarily consider e-commerce before the pandemic to be important, or at least not that important. In the meantime, other industries had already implemented e-commerce before the pandemic and continued doing so.

Even after that, I sometimes feel the need to “justify” the importance of e-commerce to long-term experts, in luxury and e-commerce industries alike. At the same time, I’ve found comfort in exchanging with experts who underline the importance of e-commerce and why it’s very much relevant in luxury. 

From an omnichannel-first perspective, e-commerce is fundamental.

From my experience, e-commerce alone generates 10-15% of a company’s whole revenue in luxury (give or take). Beyond that, it’s often one of the first brand touchpoints. This can help a customer get better acquainted with the brand catalog, price point, brand experience etc, and inspire them to go to a physical sales point if they are more comfortable with this option.

In the e-commerce strategy tips post, we discussed the importance of a seamless brand experience across all touchpoints. E-commerce is part of the whole brand experience. This means that no matter the point of contact with the brand, the experience should be seamless from online to in-store.

At the end of the day, people are going to choose which touch point of the brand they are more comfortable with. It is up to you as a brand to offer them a seamless and representative experience no matter which touchpoint they choose.

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