Luxury fashion web-shops, a successful distribution channel?

Abstract: Purpose: Can luxury fashion brands use websites and web-shops and still keep a sense of drama and exclusivity around their brand and at the same time avoid brand dilution?Background: The e-commerce opened up for new possibilities for the luxury fashion brands but due to the dotcom crash around the year of 2000 did many of them become reluctant to the Internet as a selling channel. LVMH was one of the first in this genre to start up a web- shop. It name was eluxury (eluxury.com), and sold products from LVMH’s brands like Louis Vuitton, Dior and Donna Karan. It started off in the US market and then spread to France and the United Kingdom. This inspired other brands like Gucci and Armani to also invest in e-commerce. Even though the success of these web-shops is there still an ongoing debate about whether or not luxury brands should adopt e-commerce. The major concern is the dilution of features like exclusivity and prestige of the brands, if they are present in this channel.Method: To meet the purpose a qualitative research approach was chosen. The qualitative data was collected through eight in-depth interviews with luxury fashion interested Swedish females. The answers from the interviews generated a picture of their online shopping habits, and the likes and dislikes of the websites and web-shops of Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Dior and Gucci. In addition it showed what makes a web-shop exclusive and well designed from a consumer/visitor point of view.Conclusion: The result of this research showed that it is good for luxury fashion brands to have distribution online because it makes the products a lot easier to get hold of for the consumers. Although there were several criteria that was needed to be fulfilled in order to design and create a well functioning and good web-shop. It was evident from the result of the study that the Internet can really be a good distribution channel, with only a little risk of brand dilution depending on how the web-shop is designed. To summarize, we say that a good website and web-shop meeting the criteria of the consumers can really create a stronger brand image and online sales, although a luxury fashion brand should also have good physical stores, a web-shop can in many ways really be a very suitable complement for marketing and distribution.