The Current State of E-Commerce in the Luxury Industry

AbstractThe thesis attempts to investigate the current state of online commerce taking into account the perspective of the luxury brand’s online engagement and the consumer’s attitude towards the internet commerce. In order to obtain the necessary information for proposed research topic, the author first investigates the phenomena using secondary literature, and afterwards, collects all necessary data using the empirical approach in order to obtain the primary data. As result the author attempts to draw appropriate conclusions combining the collected information. The investigation shows that the current state of online commerce presupposes the fact that, despite the incompatibility of internet and luxury concepts, the majority of luxury companies have managed to successfully integrate their business into the digital technology. The companies are becoming more adaptable to rapidly changing consumer behavior. Although the principle of adaptability is not quite common for traditional luxury houses. On the other side, the results of conducted research also demonstrate that for the majority of luxury consumers, the internet is an indispensable tool in the decision-making process. However, there is a still a room for improvement as, especially for luxury products, the internet as a purchasing channels hasn’t been yet widely accepted by affluent consumer, due to a number of trust-related issues.