One category that may seem above the fray is luxury goods —high-end products that sell based on their brand name, high price point and associated social status. While certain high-end brands still refuse to sell their products on Amazon given potential risk or damage to their perceived brand equity, the luxury goods market is experiencing rapid online growth and will reach $42 billion by 2016.
Gucci use additional images to increase the visual appeal of their Amazon product pages
What makes luxury products different from other items is their high price point and the lower frequency of purchases. While a shopper may buy paper towels on Prime Pantry every month, they are not likely to buy $86 Christian Dior Women's Perfume at such a frequency. Therefore, it is even more important for Luxury brands to close the sale with their online store fronts. Two excellent ways for Luxury brands to engage consumers and deliver that aspirational, lifestyle-orientated experience in the online channel is via rich product content, and strong ratings & reviews.
Rich Product Content for Luxury Brands
While some brands snub Amazon, their products could still be listed by third parties. In today’s omnichannel world, shopping experiences across channels blend into one another, allowing shoppers easy access to information and choices with just a few clicks. For this reason, it’s critical for brands to take advantage of the online channel to promote their items.
Online product content helps to bridge the gap between the online and offline retail worlds. For example, videos, images, and descriptive text can not only demonstrate how to use a product, but also create an engaging shopping experience reinforcing brand equity and DNA. Highlighting key celebrity endorsements or sponsorship deals right on your online store page is another way to advertise your luxury brand’s image.
While luxury brands may prefer if shoppers went directly to their brand website or in-store concession, ignoring the online channel is a risk high-end brands cannot afford to take. Websites like Amazon are some of the most visited in the world and shoppers will have an expectation that luxury brands can be bought. It would be a mistake to allow a third-party seller, who has no loyalty to building your brand equity, control what is seen.
Remember: shoppers don’t differentiate their brand experiences by channel. They experience brands and products holistically, whether they are in-store or watching a TV ad, visiting an online brand store or an online retailer, or browsing on their desktop, tablet, or smartphone. For luxury brands this is an opportunity to not only reinforce their omnichannel strategy, ensuring synergy between online and offline equity and experience.
Online Ratings & Reviews for Luxury Brands
Ratings & Reviews are key driver of ‘add to basket’. A Clavis Insight survey found over 20% of shoppers considered the presence of ratings & reviews as important as basic Product Content (such as Names, Details) in their eyes when influencing their purchase decision. While luxury brands don’t display customer sentiment on their own websites, they must accept that shoppers will be seeking out feedback and experiences on online stores.
Product Reviews, both positive and negative, are a resource and an opportunity for brands to show their love for their consumers. Consumers are 63% more likely to make a purchase from a site that has user reviews, it’s critical that brands are actively soliciting consumer feedback across online retailers.
Due to the higher price points of luxury goods, brands in these categories should be closely monitoring online Ratings & Reviews to uncover patterns in consumer feedback and exposing critical issues that impact on brand equity, subsequent shopper experiences, and ultimately sales. Brands can use these insights across your organization to fine tune your messaging, branding, and even product design. Some websites such as Amazon let brands respond to Reviews, which can be a key way to show empathy, foster shopper loyalty and sentiment. The Review section of a product page is just as important as the Digital Content, and should be treated with as much care, possibly even more care in luxury categories. Millions of dollars of partnership and ad spend can be washed down the drain if shoppers see your pages plastered with negative Reviews.
Brands can’t afford to take a passive role in monitoring reviews. There are clear actions and benefits brands must take to understand what shoppers are saying, and responding accordingly. By using Clavis’ Shopper Review Diagnostics, brands can measure syndicated vs organic reviews, set up trigger words to monitor for the appearance of words that may indicate a positive (“perfect,” “love,” or “great”) or negative (“reaction,” “irritation,” “smell,” or “damage”) experience with a product, and set up alerts that funnel directly into customer care centers, R&D, marketing, or PR.
How Luxury Brands Stack Up on the Digital Shelf
We analysed data for a number of luxury brands Christian Dior, Estee Lauder, Fendi, Givenchy, Kenzo, Loewe across Walmart.com, Target.com, and Amazon.com in the US. In the UK, the brands were Christian Dior, Estee Lauder, Fendi, Givenchy, Guerlain, Kenzo, Lancome, Loewe across Amazon and Tesco.
In the US all brands scored strongly on basic Content, with more than 98% of all products analysed containing a product description. Image presence however, the first visual cue to engage with shoppers, left a lot to be desired. On average, across the brands analysed it was discovered that less than 75% of products had more than one product image. Given the importance of digital content, it is a base requirement for brands in luxury brands to have not only multiple images, but high quality content covering the entire store page.
Clavis Insight considers a product positively reviewed if it has more than 20 reviews and above a 4.0 star averages. Unfortunately, in the UK one luxury brand had zero products that achieved this standard, while only one brand was able to have more than half of its items positively reviews. Ratings & reviews are a powerful tool for luxury brands to use to lure shoppers, and missing out on this shopper engagement can mean missing out on sales in the online channel.
