(AFP) - Tag Heuer, la marque phare du groupe de luxe français LVMH sur le segment de l'horlogerie, veut se lancer dans le commerce en ligne, a indiqué jeudi son patron, Jean-Claude Biver, lors d'un entretien avec l'AFP.

"Les ventes en ligne sont en train d'entrer dans les habitudes de consommation et si le consommateur change, il faut le suivre et aller là où il va", a-t-il expliqué.

En prenant ce tournant, la marque, dont les montres se vendent généralement entre 1.000 et 7.000 francs suisses (922 à 6.470 euros), entend notamment séduire la prochaine génération d'acheteurs.

"Si les gens qui ont actuellement 15 à 20 ans achètent aujourd'hui leurs livres, leurs vêtements, leurs baskets en ligne, ils trouveront normal d'acheter une montre de luxe sur internet quand ils auront 25 ou 30 ans", a-t-il ajouté.

Il entend également répondre aux attentes des consommateurs dans des grands pays où les achats de produits de luxe par internet sont désormais considérés comme naturels.

"Je reçois régulièrement des courriels de clients aux États-Unis qui me disent que leur magasin le plus proche se trouve à 400 kilomètres et qui ne comprennent pas pourquoi ils ne peuvent pas l'acheter en ligne", a-t-il poursuivi.

"A Monaco ou au Luxembourg, on peut toujours trouver un magasin à proximité, mais dans un grand pays comme les États-Unis ou le Canada, cela a beaucoup plus de sens", a-t-il argumenté.

Aux États-Unis, Tag Heuer a déjà fait un premier pas sur internet où il distribue sa nouvelle montre connectée conçue avec Google et Intel.

"La montre connectée est le produit idéal à vendre sur internet", a-t-il fait valoir.

Si les sites de ventes en ligne  se sont multipliés pour la mode haut de gamme ou la maroquinerie, les horlogers suisses se sont jusqu'à présent montrés très réservés sur la distribution par internet, les clients aimant généralement voir le produit en boutique avant d'acheter un produit onéreux.

De plus, la distribution s'appuie sur des contrats sélectifs ou d'exclusivité avec les magasins qui devront arriver à échéance avant de pouvoir envisager de basculer pleinement dans la distribution en ligne, a nuancé Jean-Claude Biver.

Il faudra aussi trouver un modus operandi avec les conseillers en boutique "afin que chacun y trouve son compte", a précisé ce vétéran de l'industrie horlogère.

Dans l'immédiat, il n'envisage pas encore de mettre en ligne toute la gamme, mais de commencer progressivement, "plutôt aux alentours de 2018-2019".

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Manisha Rao, 05 MArch 2016, Yourstory.com

Luxury as a concept is defined within the scope of socio-psychology as a result of its connection to a culture, state of being, and lifestyle, whether personal or collective. In the context of brands, it relates to a signature style, identity, and strong emotional and symbolic associations that are interpreted in terms of products of high aesthetic quality, controlled distribution, and premium pricing. And this is what we refer to as exclusivity.

Even as luxury brands are taking to the digital space a little later than the other industries, they are bringing in their own energies to it. So, the product perception in case of premium goods is not incidental, but a cultivated outcome of a carefully crafted positioning strategy that largely hinges on ‘exclusivity’ in its appeal and aura.

Exclusivity in tech
We take up the case of very prominent Apple smartwatch and its marketing as not just a piece of tech innovation but also a luxe accessory. The launch campaign was a mix with exclusive editorial spreads in various editions of Vogue (which is fashion-specific and not a tech magazine) and also tactics like limited retail distribution, tie-ups with upscale retailers (Colette in Paris and Opening Ceremony in London), individual sales appointments in stores, and celebrity endorsements. The result of all these strategies was the phenomenal buzz around the smartwatch that came to figure on the coveted lists of many jetsetters.

Exclusivity in E-commerce
Now there are luxury brands innovating to reinforce their unique brand USPs even as they creatively attempt to carve a distinct online echo for them to cut through the competition. By coming up with visually tempting and experiential digital platforms via short films, apps, microsites, and online events, luxury brands are revamping their digital personas and also influencing the Millennial consumer to look out for that special, singular brand experience like Flipkart’s exclusive Xiaomi phone launch in India.

Exclusivity in luxury clothing
Brands like Jimmy Choo, Tod’s, Louboutin, Gucci, Zegna and Burberry offer product customisation in terms of size, fit, personalisation such as monogramming and matching. These brands make up that section of luxury brands that have their fingers on the consumer’s pulse and study the fast-evolving consumer profile in terms of desires, buying behaviours. Such reflections then lead to creation of unique apps that enhance consumer’s interaction with the brand and also impart an exclusive experience, such as Hermès Tie Break and Burberry’s Art of the Trench15. Some luxury brands are also offering certain services availed only through their online portals and some are launching exclusive collections online first, for example, Ralph Lauren has launched its luxury pet essentials with Darveys.com, luxury brand Swiss military with Firefox bikes and designers like Manish Arora, Sabyasachi are tying up exclusively with portals like Jabong, Myntra, and Amazon.

Exclusivity in online departmental stores
In addition to the brand owned online offshoots, there are online departmental stores that are the other major outposts for the luxury shoppers. NET-A-PORTER is one of the most preferred leading online shopping sites in the UK and USA. Along with its high service ethic and unique content and exhaustive range of luxury brands, the site also marks out a preferred treatment strategy for its most valuable customers, the EIPS (extremely important people). Hence, they enjoy exclusive services like having their orders picked, packed, and dispatched, while also availing services like personalised look-books, personal shoppers, etc.

Consumer perspective
Customers need to feel special as they indulge their time and energy into a brand. According to a McKinsey report from February 2015, 60 per cent of US luxury consumers say they would be more likely to buy at an online shop if it offered luxury brands that no one else sold online, a sentiment echoed by their German counterparts. Forty-one per cent say they would be more likely to buy online if there were better prices offered.

Branching out further in the luxury domain are private shopping clubs that are members-only, where members are given special offers on big brands. Luxury flash-sale site Gilt Groupe has been offering exclusive sales to its Facebook fans – more reason for them to go online and buy and feel special.

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A combination of increased demand for high-end brands and low-cost tourism is expected to drive the global duty-free retail market until 2019, according to a new report by Technavio.

Due to high consumer demand and affordable travel rates, the duty-free retail sector is expected to reach approximately $98 billion in revenue by 2019. As such, Technavio’s “Global Duty-Free Retailing Market 2015-2019” examines market growth by revenue and tracks emerging trends for the sector to illustrate why having a duty-free strategy can be profitable for global luxury brands.

“The global duty-free retailing market has been growing significantly because of rising consumption by the growing middle class who are traveling abroad,” said Arushi Thakur, analyst at Technavio. “The fast growth in adoption of luxury goods among developing countries such as China and Brazil increased the global duty-free retailing market to $64.83 billion in 2014 from $60 billion in the previous year.

“Among all the countries, South Korea’s Incheon Airport reported a record sales of $2 billion in 2014,” she said. “The global duty-free retailing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.57 percent for the period 2015-2019.”

(...)

The duty-free market has five distinctive retailers accounting for 49.7 percent of the total revenue. LVMH-owned DFS is the largest duty-free retailer, offering more than 700 of the world’s leading brands, and had a 13.1 percent revenue share of the industry in 2014.

Categories available at duty-free shops such as DFS include fashion accessories and hard luxury, fragrance and cosmetics, wine and spirits, tobacco and confectionery and fine foods. The fashion accessories and hard luxury category offers the most products, at 32.10 percent of total offerings, while perfume and cosmetics accounts for 29.21 percent of duty-free retail items.

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Legend : It’s a sweet ride around Hong Kong in one of The Peninsula’s fleet of Rolls-Royces

AND THAT IS WHY WE DO NOT RELY ENTIRELY ON BIG DATA

From #HBR, Ana Brant, March 2016.

You check into your $1,000-a-night luxury suite. Your bathroom is lovely, stocked with shampoo, body wash, lotions, soaps. Your towels are plush, plentiful, neatly folded. This is great. But where’s the hair spray? You have a meeting in an hour. You need hair spray.

You call the front desk. The front desk says, “We sell that in the gift shop, madame.”

That’s not good enough.

Why isn’t there hair spray in your bathroom?

It’s not there because a) it most likely wasn’t on the mystery shopper checklist from a ratings agency — such as AAA or Forbes Travel Guide – engaged by the hotel company to help it guarantee the consistency of its service, and b) the hotel has neither developed nor leveraged customer data at a level of granularity required to know that you are 1) a woman and 2) in town on business.

To do that, the hotel needs to know you on a much deeper level by leveraging data and turning that data into information it can use to deliver a customized experience. It can’t rely on a checklist.

Mystery shopper checklists are used not only in the hospitality industry, but also in automobile, restaurant, and retail businesses, among others. Businesses design standard processes to make sure they get good ratings by checking all the boxes on the agencies’ lists. These ratings are then used by company marketing departments to impress customers, thereby driving volume and revenue. These ratings cannot be ignored. Get a bad one, and your competition will use it to sell against you.

However, trying to provide luxury service by implementing standardized processes that will ensure compliance, with checklists designed by third parties that do not know your business as you do, will inevitably fail to address individual customer needs. These kinds of checklists address the fundamentals of good service — but meeting the requirements of the ratings agencies with standardized processes will inevitably disappoint the individual that you, as a luxury business, most need.

Catering to the individual is what defines luxury; in the luxury segment, it is the critical competitive differentiator. The challenge for any business seeking to deliver a luxury experience is to be knowledgeable enough to go beyond the standard, to have hair spray for the person who needs it whether or not it’s on a checklist.

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Ana Brant serves as director of global guest experience and innovation for the London-based Dorchester Collection, having previously served as the quality manager for The New York Palace and the area director of quality for The Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air. Brant started her career with The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Brant’s public speaking engagements have included the Harvard University Graduate School, the Malcolm Baldrige Awards Recipient Conference, and the 2014 Cornell Hospitality Research Summit. She’s on twitter at @AnaMaritaBrant.

MARCH 1, 2016 / WRITTEN BY ALICE CAVANAGH

A young shopper’s entry to luxury fashion used to be perfume. But execs at LVMH and Prada must have noticed millennials’ habit of blowing their paycheck on food, because both companies recently battled over two of Milan’s most historic cafés.

Instead of launching their own restaurants (Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar), opening an in-store franchise (Rose Bakery in Dover Street Market), or collaborating on pop-ups with a mega chef (Noma + Club Monaco), the luxury firms bought up centuries-old institutions near their boutiques around Via Monte Napoleone.

Cova, 199 years old and now owned by LVMH, maintains its gilded aura, while Prada’s Pasticceria Marchesi, built in 1824, has been given a Miuccia-esque makeover—complete with eye-catching packaging—for its second location. Wes Anderson recently designed the Bar Luce in the nearby Fondazione Prada—another dream collision of food and fashion—so imagine what he could do for the rumored Dubai Marchesi. As the late Louis Vuitton president Yves Carcelle once said, “I’ve nothing against Starbucks, but I think it makes more sense to have a Cova next door.”

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GENEVE, 1er mars (Reuters) - BMW entend rester le leader mondial des voitures de luxe devant ses compatriotes Mercedes-Benz et Audi, a déclaré mardi le président du directoire du constructeur allemand au salon de Genève.

"Notre objectif est d'être numéro un", a dit Harald Krüger, ajoutant s'attendre à une légère progression des ventes de BMW cette année en raison de sa croissance en Chine et en Europe.

Le lancement d'une version longue du BMW X1 en Chine devrait contribuer à une hausse des ventes dans ce pays au second semestre, ce qui devrait se traduire par une légère croissance des ventes en Chine sur l'ensemble de l'année, a déclaré Harald Krüger.

Les ventes en Europe devraient pour leur part augmenter de 5% à 10%, a-t-il poursuivi.

Les nouvelles règles européennes sur les émissions polluantes vont contraindre BMW à effectuer d'importants investissements, qui se chiffreront en centaines de millions d'euros, a dit le président du directoire du constructeur bavarois.

BMW est engagé dans des discussions constructives avec le gouvernement allemand sur les moyens de développer les ventes de véhicules électriques et la prochaine séance de négociations se déroulera d'ici fin avril, a-t-il ajouté.

Interrogé au sujet de l'éventualité d'une sortie de la Grande-Bretagne de l'Union européenne, Harald Krüger a répondu: "De manière générale, nous n'aimons pas effectuer des investissements dans des circonstances incertaines." Il a souligné que ces propos ne devaient pas être interprétés comme une indication sur la stratégie de BMW en Grande-Bretagne. (Edward Taylor; Bertrand Boucey pour le service français, édité par Véronique Tison)