The Online Purchase Experience Ranking in Paris: highlight on the research

19 October 2017

Customer engagement Fashion

Packaging example

Contactlab continues to analyze how Fashion&Luxury brands perform online: this time we shift our focus back to Europe in Paris, after having tested Milan in 2015, New York in 2016 and China in 2017.

It is important to point out that the online shopping experience is particular relevant for the long-term success of Luxury brand given that today is already affecting more than 12 % of total sales, projected to 20-25% in the next decade. The impact is not only on pure online customers (ca. 5%), but above all on the growing number of cross-channel customers buying both via Ecommerce and In Store channels ( ca. 7%, 1/3 online and 2/3 in store).

In order to be successful, brands need to offer a consistent luxury experience across the multiple touch points of the online purchasing process. In our methodology, we rank each brand performance on 50 Digital and 44 Physical parameters.

New Ecommerce entry 24 Sevrès is leading the overall ranking, followed by Fendi and Brunello Cucinelli in # 2 position

24 Sevrès able to engineer an outstanding purchasing experience from scratch
Fendi and Chanel confirmed at the top (Fendi already # 1 in the NY and Milan tests, Chanel # 4 in NY)
Brunello Cucinelli significantly improving (from # 10 in NY to # 2 in Paris) thanks to a complete redesign of the Online Purchasing process (insourced from YNAP), and a pervasive attention to details especially on physical touch points
Balenciaga still #1 on the Digital touch points, overall #6
First Ecommerce movers Burberry and Gucci fighting back: Burberry up to # 5 from 13 in NY, Gucci up to # 9 from 16 in NY

Online Purchase Experience Ranking in Paris.

Overal High-end brands are on Top, while Premium brands, especially US based, are in the bottom rankings: ‘‘E-commerce Luxury’’ is converging with ‘‘In-store Luxury’’. Prada, Ferragamo and Tiffany are somehow misplaced: the more general positioning problems of these brands are probably affecting their attention to digital.

Farfetch and Galeries Lafayette resulted very competitive on digital touchpoints, while trailing on physical ones (we observed the same pattern for US Department Stores in last year NY test). On the contrary, both 24 Sevrès and Net-a-Porter were able to offer a complete 360 degrees luxury experience, competitive with High-End luxury brands. In Paris 24 Sevrès is also able to offer cross-channel in-store services via Le Bone Marché parent.

Some areas for improvements?