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website visitor in an immersive environment that makes up the brand's uni-
verse online. It is about keeping a focus on ensuring the best possible web
experience and perfecting this as the one and only mission of the luxury online
strategy. This rich experience will eventually translate into sales and loyalty.
It is a well-known fact that luxury brands are fanatical about perfection
(I mean the truly luxurious brands not the multitude of brands claiming to
be luxury). This obsession with perfection is not only linked to product crea-
tion, but also to providing an optimal experience to clients through services.
Through the in-store design, atmosphere and product merchandizing, packag-
ing and sales interaction (which sometimes leads to ceremonial demonstrations
of products) the experience is supposed to be the winning component in the
luxury mix. The same applies to luxury services across hotels, private transport
and concierge offerings. If you remember Rufus the jewelry salesman played by
Rowan Atkinson in the 2003 British hit movie
Love Actually,
who epitomized
this obsession with providing an impeccable experience in a luxurious environ-
ment, then you very well know what I'm talking about. This level of perfection
in providing the best experience is essential as much offline as online.
As we may imagine, providing an exceptional experience in the physical
environment is played out through human contact and supported by the fea-
tures that influence the atmosphere and enhance the ambience in the imme-
diate surroundings. When a client is in the lobby of a luxury hotel like the
Ritz-Carlton and is immersed in the delightful world that has been enhanced
by the style, colors and forms of the art works and decorations on display not
to forget the lighting and scent, his mood is likely to be influenced by this
unique environment (see Figure 4.1). This forms a crucial aspect of the Ritz
experience and is likely to be further elevated by the outstanding attention
of the hotel staff who ensure that the client's needs are met and their wishes
granted sometimes even before they ask. The goal is quite simple - to make
the client's experience positive through creating sensations that ensure that
they feel good and that they continue to associate the Ritz-Carlton with these
good feelings, which will likely lead them to return to the hotel. The same
concept may be applied to luxury stores, restaurants and services points.
Now, if creating an exceptional experience is supposed to be a core ingredi-
ent in the luxury mix, it is time to wonder why this factor has not been repre-
sented and made a central point of a luxury brand's presence online. A quick
tour of the cyberspace shows that the websites of major luxury companies are
either content-free and flash-heavy or are information- and retail-focused in a
bland form. The majority look like endless pages of online catalogues. This
approach has been adopted as a result of the widely adhered to consensus that
luxury clients are invulnerable to online experiences and that their major drive
to the Internet is to save time. This is far from the reality. As a result, luxury
brands have concentrated over the last ten years on developing websites in
order to say that they are “online” and most of these websites are based on
disseminating information and the occasional e-retail. But the issue is no
