H&M, Zara, Forever 21… typical mass market brands, which strategy over all marketing channels is clear: Sell, sell and sell again. We all have been to a Zara store. Depending on what time you go, you can be lucky to find a clean floor, well assorted racks and employees who are really interested in what you are searching for. However, anyone who has ever entered a Flagship store of a luxury brand like Burberry, Louis Vuitton or Versace knows that it feels like an entrance in a museum only for apparel, fragrances, jewelry etc.
The strategic decisions to build an overall experience for the customer has a tremendously important value in the luxury sector and distinguishes it from the mass market. In this article I´m going to dive deeper in the luxury market and the importance of the flagship store as an important touchpoint.
For Karl Lagerfeld the internet does not convey “the unique feel and sophistication of luxury materials, refined tailoring and extraordinary attention to detail found in luxury fashion.” Indeed, it is a challenge for luxury brands to manage the online and offline presence for the customer and implement on both channels an equal brand experience. Online you have almost access from everywhere to buy a product, flagship-stores, however, are only available selected in big métropoles. The biggest challenge for the brands is to create a world of experience, which is supposed to convey the exclusiveness. Luxury products have a higher sensibility as other products. Besides the brand image, the personal experience plays an important role in a flagship-store, or in fact, the multisensory experience, because our senses create memories and memories help us in our decision-making processes.
Why it is so important for luxury brands to address our human senses to create an emotion and memories I´m going to investigate for you today.
First, let´s have a look on the audible features in a luxury store. Fast and loud music lead to a higher turnover of customer in stores, which is not the purpose for luxury brands. Burberry, for instance, plays acoustic music in their store with a moderate volume. The quiet and slow tempo causes shoppers to linger a little longer. In my opinion, the most difficult part is to find the right artist or genre for the auditory atmosphere. Whereas Burberry are mainly focused on dark colors of their products, I would suggest a much slower and older music than brands like Gucci or Versace. Their products have more colors and are also popular among millennials, so in this case a bit faster.
The visual experience is particularly determined by the lightning of the store. Flagship-stores usually show just a few items on the main floor, with the intention, to emphasize the exclusiveness of the products and not to overwhelm the customer. The lightning is dimmed, whereas the lightning on the products is brighter and lighter. Furthermore, Burberry added features like videos of the latest fashion show or big pictures of their models wearing the products to bring the products closer to the customer. The furniture is well elaborated, premium leather, wood and glass decorate the store.
In my opinion, the most difficult sense to overall satisfy is the olfactory.
Since taste is different and associations with certain smells arouse memories which differ from person to person, it is difficult to find the ideal smell to create an environment that everyone likes and reminds of the brand. For luxury brands as Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Chanel it´s the goal to not be intrusive so that the customer wants to leave the store immediately he or she opens the door. In contrast, Abercrombie & Fitch tempts their customers with an intrusive citrus smell, which is unique for the brand and leaves behind an impression. It has a strong association with juvenility and sportiness. However, the scent wouldn’t fit to the mentioned luxury brands, since the connotations are not desirable.
The 4thsense is the haptic one and means not only to touch the product, which is a big advantage compared to the online presence of luxury brands, it also includes the temperature stimulus. The luxury store needs to create a “Comfort Temperature”, so the customer is not freezing or sweating, which eventually would lead to the undesirable effect of leaving. Due to the benefit that the customer can touch the products, he or she can satisfy oneself that the products have a valuable quality and are made of selected, expensive material. Another interesting feature we can observe in luxury stores are carpets in the sales rooms. They are not only creating a less noisy sound than marble or wood floors, they also slow down the customer and increase the length of stay, which ultimately might increase the likelihood of purchasing a product.
The 5thand last sense Flagship-store are trying to highlight is the gustatory one. Frankly, the focus for brands like Gucci, Prada or Chanel are their products like apparel, accessory or jewelry. It is not possible to taste them or let´s say: not desirable. However, to create a comprehensive experience brands like Giorgio Armani, Roberto Cavalli or Pierre Cardin offer also only for the brand produced chocolate, wine, champagne or other products to satisfy the customer overall. The positive emotions created by the gustatory sense can lead to an increased sales volume due to the fact that the customer feels appreciated by the service he or she receives.
Ultimately we can say that flagship-stores as a touchpoint for brand communication are highly sensitive, but still the probably most important tool for luxury brands. The difficulty is to create an environment which keeps in the mind of the customers and leave a unique memory behind, which helps the customer to identify a brand.
I hope you have enjoyed my todays article about flagship stores in the world of luxury brands. See you soon.
Cheers!
Niklas
Sources:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11621-012-0108-7.pdf
Picture Sources:
-https://www.visitlondon.com/de/sehen-und-erleben/ort/925382-burberry-world-flagship-store
-http://www.buro247.me/fashion/news/discover-gucci-s-new-flagship-store-in-the-dubai-m.html
-http://www.cblltd.co.uk/portfolio/abercrombie-fitch-london/
-https://www.armani.com/fr/armanicom/unisexe/armani-lifestyle/dolci_section
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