Digitization of Customer Experience in Luxury
(A2019-9695)

AUTHORS

Daria Erkhova, University of Bern; Elena Ehrensperger, University of Bern; Harley Krohmer, University of Bern

KEYWORDS

luxury customer experience; digitization; capabilities

ABSTRACT

Creating a superior customer experience is critical for firm performance. Modern technological advancements and rapid digitization have opened up numerous opportunities for firms to enhance and differentiate customer experience. While recent academic and business studies have made first attempts to identify digital customer experience capabilities generalizable across industry-contexts, our study takes a contingency perspective and investigates which capabilities are required to create a superior customer experience in the luxury industry. We focus on the luxury goods industry since it is characterized by a specific customer value that is different from that of non-luxury goods. Based on qualitative interviews with senior digital marketing executives of luxury firms, we identify three luxury-specific digital customer experience capabilities which help luxury firms to create superior customer experience and facilitate luxury customer value delivery.