Is there a unique approach to luxury sale? More and more clients are noticing that the typical parameters of a traditional customer journey do not apply to most of the Gen Z customers. New generation customers have not only re-defined the values of shopping, but forced some of the luxury brands to re-define their values. Do Gen Z customers care about brand heritage and traditions (at least in the way it was considered in the 90’s-00’s) or do they see that as a bunch of ‘old stuff’?
As you can imagine, this new situation is taking several brands on a crossroad of unknown territories. On one side the brands could keep loyal to their roots, with the high risk of becoming unattractive to younger customers and seeing their traditional customers getting older and disappear. On the other side, embracing an approach that is easy to understand for new generations, might put in danger the essence and the authenticity of the brand in the long run. The second option could even guarantee strong short term results, but you need the resources to do a complete turn around. And that involves not only the collection design, but store investment, renewals, personnel, training.
Some brands today are very difficult to understand. A continuous change of strategy, creative directors, top management. Elegant and traditional brands change products into hyper modern collections. However, sometimes capex is limited. Therefore, (most of )the stores concept and the store personnel remain the same increasing the contrast between what it should be and what really is: like buying a new Ferrari but using it with an LPG engine because there are not resources for further investments (and often expecting it to run like an F1 car).
