Consumer behavior of luxury watch buyers in the pre-purchase phase of the customer journey in Germany

The prevailing thesis deals with the consumer behavior of luxury watch buyers in Germany during the pre-purchase phase with special focus on digital touchpoints. The aim is to provide a catalogue of measures as recommendation to action to reach the target audience with the right combination of touchpoints. Theory suggests that throughout the whole customer journey consumers encounter contact points with the brand, therefore it is critical for companies to uncover what consumers expect and desire at each point. However, the challenge is to discover the touchpoints that have the biggest positive impact for the brand on the customer to deploy the right resources and disinvest irrelevant ones. The chosen research method on which this master thesis is based on is a secondary literature review supported by a quantitative empirical study in cooperation with the market research agency Responsio GmbH, comprising a sample size of 196 cases. One of the most important findings is that the encountering of touchpoints, occasionally and purposely, has an impact on the mode of purchase (online or offline). It is recommended to invest in magazines (predominantly opinion-formulating) and newspapers as they create the most relevant digital and analogue touchpoints with the potential customers.