Do luxury brands offer an optimized on-line consumer experience on their e-commerce platforms? A comparative study of Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Gucci.

A few years ago, the importance of ecommerce platforms for luxury goods was considered by some specialists as secondary as in-store experience was viewed as more important. This has changed significantly with the rapid evolution of luxury consumers who also want to buy luxury brands online. The objective of this research is to evaluate whether luxury brands have been able to adapt to these changes and if they offer an optimized on-line consumer experience on their e-commerce platforms. This will be achieved by analyzing via an exploratory research 1) the website performance, 2) the website usability and 3) the e-service quality of three luxury flagship brands: Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Gucci. The research showed that the three brands currently perform well at optimizing their respective e-commerce websites. Comparatively, Hermès is still slightly lagging behind in some dimensions compared to higher overall performances by Louis Vuitton and Gucci. Areas of improvement have been identified for all brands.