The way to maintain luxury brands’ exclusivity and arouse emotion in the digital era

Abstract

This thesis investigates how luxury brands could maintain their exclusivity and arouse emotion in the digital environment. The purpose is to define some guidelines that luxury brands could take into consideration to develop and implement online strategies. To achieve this aim the thesis analyses first of all different subjects, from luxury branding to consumer buying behaviour, in order to identify some key features which could be useful to evaluate brand’s exclusivity and emotion in the digital world. Moreover, the cases of Burberry and Gucci are studied to evaluate how these luxury brands, which appear pioneers in the digital environment, have managed the identified features. The findings show that brands’ strategies are well structured in order to boost both brands’ values and characteristics; furthermore it appears that they take into account the majority of the key features, especially those concerning brand’s consistency, heritage and interactivity.