Engagement of E-marketing by Luxury Brands, including an Empirical Study. Author: Rachel van Munster University of Twente P.O. Box 217, 7500AE Enschede The Netherlands
[email protected] ABSTRACT Luxury Brand Management in the Internet Age The purpose of this study is to highlight the reasons provided by academic literature and the successful stories of luxury brands with their actual use of internet as marketing strategy, such to inspire other low or non online active brands to engage the internet with all its possibilities and activities as well and thereby help solve the research problem: ‘How can luxury brands successfully engage the internet as marketing strategy?’ Luxury brands and the management of these brands are discussed in the background section, while the literature review elaborates on e-marketing and luxury brand management. Three key activities are introduced: interacting, storytelling and experience. After an in depth description of the current online activity and highlights of five luxury brands: Burberry, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana, the outcome of the empirical study conducted among these luxury brands is described and discussed. The survey outcome corresponds with the possibilities described in the literature review and shows that the luxury brands questioned use a lot of the internet marketing tools provided, and although they can still learn from each other and the possibilities presented in the literature review to enhance their marketing strategy, the survey is also providing supporting evidence from the field of practice that the possibilities and activities the literature review describes are actually used by the luxury brands and therefore it is practically a given that the luxury brands that are low or not active online should also engage the internet as their marketing strategy.