Understanding acceptance of luxury products over an online medium vis-à-vis offline channel

Abstract

Luxury products are an experience as the utility of the product is just one of the reasons for purchase for many. The experience is created by the brand value, societal status symbol, touch and feel of the product, royal treatment by the store executives, ambience and locality of the store, unique features (not always) etc. This value adds are expected to justify the extremely high price charged for the product. In the current understanding, this value adds are facilitated by an instore offline experience. Thus, traditionally, it is expected that the acceptance of luxury products through online channel would be less. However, online channels have taken over the world by storm owing to the better reach, convenience, prices and the pandemic induced lockdowns, which led to closure of offline stores for around 5-6 months and even today, there is a hesitancy to venture out of home due to the looming variants of the virus. In such a scenario, we were interested in understanding the acceptance of luxury products through online channel specifically in India.