Luxury Retail and Digital Management, 2nd Edition

Conclusion

In this book, we wished to provide all the necessary tools for senior executives of luxury brands seeking to organise and optimise the physical distribution of their products. This is why we have emphasised the choice and the organisation of the brick-and-mortar sales points (location, concept, logistics, identification and management of customer data, etc.), as well as digital distribution (online, offline, O2O, role of the Internet in physical distribution). Some readers may get to this point and say that all this is only of moderate interest to them because the specificities of their brand are different – either because of its size or its sector. We believe, however, that all that we have described applies to all sectors, and we would like to address this subject in this conclusion.

A first distinction should be made by sector of activity. Our remarks may have appeared to concern only the fashion, accessories, jewellery and tableware sectors. In fact, as we have shown, the trend for the past 30 years has been towards strengthening and developing single-brand stores, management of sales outlets and, by extension, that of digital alternatives, and is a daily concern and priority for management. All the brand managers we met told us how important it is for them to build a steady, trustful and profitable relationship with customers, which, of course, is either through a visit to a brand's store, or a unique, comprehensive and one-to-one contact on the Internet.

At ...