How are Luxury Customers Different from Other Customers?
There is no denial in the fact that the needs of luxury brand customers are considerably different than traditional customer. With more availability of resources and less availability of time than average customers, there is fierce competition for attracting the customers in luxury brands (Shukla et al., 2016). The current base of luxury customers lay emphasis on substance instead of style. This means that they will be connecting with a luxury brand that implements marketing savvy approach for telling a story and further aligning them with the personal values of the customers. They do not show preferences to brand that only rely on the flashiness of products. The current customer base is highly educated and hence, they should be treated in a way that they assist to ramp up content, and further avoid the language of commodity marketing and gimmicks (Ko et al., 2016).
Impressing Luxury Customers through Experience
Moving ahead of basic advertisement and marketing, luxury brands necessarily need more approaches than just simple promotion of features and attributes for their services and products. In the current era, there is no sole sale to luxury customer on the basis of key benefits as there has to be a critical consideration of enhanced experience. This particular experience should be expressed in a way that key emotional foundation of the customer is touched, either in person, on call, or digitally (Lee and Kim, 2019). The focus of luxury customers has to be captured with extraordinary efforts while addressing various aspects related to brand experience. As a significant example, Hilton Hotel is one of the most luxurious brands in the hospitality industry and simply providing good services does not help the brand in establishing customer loyalty. The company has to establish strong experiences for better attraction of luxury customers.
Recently, the brand introduced a new hotel room which is completely vegan, including its room services and furnishings. Hilton went through a lot of challenges in order to look for interesting materials that were not just attractive, but also eco-friendly, sustainable, and vegan by nature (Lee and Kim, 2019). Hilton focus on the significant elements of vegan culture, shifting from synthetic materials and shifting towards future botanical based materials.
With a significant rise in the trends of veganism across the globe, adequate awareness about the product options across the market will be crucial required for enhancing the experience of customers in terms of home furnishings.
In addition, Fifth & West is the most exciting residential opportunity introduced by future downtown Austin Luxury High Rise. The brand wanted to express its landmark achievement in its marketing tactics to attract more potential residential customers (Lee and Kim, 2019). The overall design and interiors of the building were tremendous and every customer was provided knowledge and facts about the thoughtfulness and carefulness introduced in all elements of the project (Shukla et al., 2016). This involved vivid quotes in concise language from Michael Hsu, the interior architect, in an effective manner to describe the entire construction experience. As a result of this marketing tactic, 60 per cent of the property was sold out in three months after it was inaugurated.
Closely connecting customer with the story and experience of the brand, it is crucial to enable them in interacting across the brand such that there is maximum convenience in the demand of lifestyle (Nagasawa, 2008). The provision of maximum best option for addressing their needs in all stages of the buying cycle helps them in the buying decision. Brands should focus on accomplishing this by emphasizing upon the creative envelope while using technology in a manner that the best quality can be provided and unique needs of the buyers can be accommodated.
Critically aligning marketing efforts to improve customer experience is crucial for deeply connecting the needs of luxury customers with the brand display (Shukla et al., 2016). As reflected in the examples, both the luxury brands significantly utilized the expression of experience to further reflect upon their values in presenting the respective products and services. In the absence of experience, luxury brands will not be able to succeed.
References
Ko, E., Phau, I. and Aiello, G., 2016. Luxury brand strategies and customer experiences: Contributions to theory and practice. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), pp.5749-5752.
Lee, Y. and Kim, I., 2019. A value co-creation model in brand tribes: the effect of luxury cruise consumers’ power perception. Service Business, 13(1), pp.129-152.
Nagasawa, S., 2008. Creating Customer Experience in Luxury Brands-Comparison of Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Coach. Waseda Business & Economic Studies, (44), pp.25-39.
Shukla, P., Banerjee, M. and Singh, J., 2016. Customer commitment to luxury brands: Antecedents and consequences. Journal of Business Research, 69(1), pp.323-331.