Lu Cia: Intro
Luxury brands are waking up to how technology can improve the experience of shopping as well as revive sales. However, technology is not a panacea to the luxury goods sector but it does provide it with a new way to interact and engage with customers. And GUCCI is one company that has worked hard to understand digital and use it to reach new audience. Today, GUCCI is establishing itself as an innovative, creative ‘new’ world luxury brand. GUCCI no longer make a distinction between online and offline, and include digital in the core of all their major marketing initiatives. To be specific, GUCCI seamlessly connected digital and legacy by leveraging fragmentation to create omni channel experience and product access is identical.
Our website will evaluate GUCCI’s current technological strategies in its app and digital flagship store.And based on digital strategies, our website will predict GUCCI potential future disruptions from future technological developments. Finally, our website will speculate how might GUCCI innovate using potential new technologies.
Amaza:
Gucci Technologies:
Gucci uses mobile apps called Luce SBA (Usher), using MicroStrategy to transform the customer experience by connecting physical and online shopping. There was a live demonstration in Las Vegas in 2014.
For customers the app is free and it is very easily accessible. For Gucci the app can be costly however for a luxury brand it is not expensive. It is personalised, new and benefits existing customers and attracts consumers. This technology saves time, provides easy shopping and enhances the shopping experience for the customer. It can help with the stags of Awareness, Persuasion and Decision. This technology is great for millennials and suits their fast life.
- Using the app, you can take a picture of the magazine advertising Gucci products and it will instantly recognise it and put all the products in the magazine on the app and you can put it on your Wishlist. This doesn’t require any scanning of barcodes instead it is using the image itself.
- Each customer has their own account on the app, including their age, name, gender, image and other details. Each app has an individual bar code which allows the staff at Gucci to access every consumer’s details including their image so that they can recognise them. And so, every time a consumer arrives the staff are informed straight away, with the time they arrive and how long they have spent in store. It also allows access to their wish list so that when the consumer asks for help they can view the Wishlist and make suggestions accordingly.
- Instore, Gucci offer digital displays of models through videos which the consumer can interact by simply touching the video. From this the consumer can see the products the models are wearing and using the barcode provided at the side of the screen the consumers can get the same video on their app. Know the video and the app are linked the consumer can drag any items from the video into the Wishlist and as it is connected to their app the item will automatically show on the Wishlist on their app as well.
- Bluetooth related technology; whenever the consumer goes closer to a product the app detects the product and gives full details of it.
- After your Wishlist is done you can ask for assistance through the app, the staff would immediately know of this they can check when you arrived, how long you have been waiting for assistance and they can view your details by clicking on your name along with your Wishlist.
Leon:
In my part of the video I talk about creating a Gucci movie. I talk about how the Gucci movie will benefit the company and allow customers to gain an interest in the company as a whole.
I talk about how it will allow customers to gain an understanding of a product journey and if the movie would be an expensive cost to the Gucci company.
I detailed on how the movie fit in with Gucci’s whole image and whether the company had ever done anything like this before.
I talk about how the movie will be put across to the customer and where it will be displayed within the Gucci store.
I go on explaining how the Gucci movie will appeal to the innovators, early adapters and bridge the gap to the early majority and eventually lead to the late majority.
I explain how the customer will use this method of communication and how it will make them want to buy Gucci’s product; then going on to say how the Gucci movie will strengthen the brands market position.
Lu Cia:
In fact, new luxury Digital Flagship store at gucci.com is not very different from a physical store. Their starting point is consistent, providing customers with the most detailed information about product. In particular,customers can only through a click to understand each item – inside and out – before purchase, just as you would be able to do in a store.
According to Frida Giannini commented ‘It is also very important to me that social networking capabilities are an integral part of the new site as shopping for fashion is almost always an experience that is shared and enjoyed with friends’(KERING,2010). Therefore,One of the reasons Gucci has been successful in attracting new customers is because of the attention paid to the internet. Through the site, Facebook, Twitter and the Gucci App, the brand reaches a growing digitally-oriented customer in a very direct and content rich way. For instance,in celebrating its
iconic Horse-bit loafers,GUCCI used a suite of content methods,from stoppable mobile videos to user-generated photography.It then distributed this across its social network pages on Facebook(Telegraph,2013).
What is more,on every product page shoppers can click on links that directly connect them to relevant content – videos, news items, photos of celebrities wearing a product – from the “World of Gucci” area. Shoppers can express their passion for Gucci by sharing product and content pages via links on Facebook, Twitter and e-mail or by simply selecting “love” for a particular product or page.
How might GUCCI innovate using potential new technologies
As the data show that luxury fashion is adapting an individual and bespoke product which is an app alert sales staff when an existing customer enters a store and provide assistants with useful information on their tastes,size and shopping preference.And GUCCI is not otherwise.Each of customer has their own individual bar code which allows the staff to have a good command of customer information based on their wish list. Besides, GUCCI also offers digital displays of models through videos which the consumer can interact by simply touching the video.Although it can show the effect of the upper body of virtual model, but it still has a certain gap after the effect of the upper body of the customer. And on the other hand, high-end luxury goods can’t get customers to try it on causally because of its price and unique.Due to these two defects, and today’s VR application is more and more extensive. And it is very common in the entertainment venues for visitors to experience real shooting in the battlefield or roller coaster and so on. GUCCI might innovate the current technologies by letting customers wear VR glasses to feel the reality.Through virtual glasses, customers can see themselves wearing what they select in virtual reality.
Victoria:
Smart Mirror
How often do we walk into a fitting room with handful of clothes to try on but it doesn’t fit? And we feel embarrassed to ask the assistant to help. Or the times we try clothes on that we don’t like the way we look in them. Retailors has the same problem too because they doesn’t know the reason why people are turning the down the clothes after trying them on, what if there is a device that can help retailors to solve this problem by collection datas to provide evidence on reasons. (Because we all know that datas doesn’t lie)
Oak Lap smart mirrors is a fitting room smart mirrors that is so smart that it can track the amount of clothes we are carrying in as well as synchronize with the store’s inventory and point of sale system. It collects data on people’s performance while they are using the system and the way they interact with the mirror.
The Oak Labs smart mirror is a full length interactive mirror with touchable screen. retailors can customize the smart mirrors and having them in place can cost between $10,000 to $15,000. Ralph Lauren Corporation was one of the first retailors to adopt this technology by purchasing 16 full size touch screen mirror to put into their flag stores in the US. (Townsend Matthew, Feb 2017)
A statement taken by Fast Company (Jun 2017) from Petah Marian, a senior editor of retail intelligence at trend forecasting firm WGSN. Previously mentioned that “sees stores attempting to bring together the best elements of the online and offline experiences. Smart mirrors offer brands data that is generally limited to the e-commerce sphere.”
How does the smart mirrors work?
After selecting the items, you wanted to try on and entering an Oak Labs fitting room, the mirrors would change from the default “resting” states of playing branded content (Type of advertising for their products) and respond to your presence by a change of lighting. if for some reason you dislike the lighting the mirror does offer other light setting choices.
An RFID antenna in the mirror reads the RFID tags on all the clothes carried in and automatically displays all the items side by side on the mirror, along with additional details like other colours and sizes available. If you want to interact with the mirror by touching it and you can select a different colour as well as receiving style recommendations of how to style the product. If you wanted to try on another size, colour or a different product. The smart mirror allows you to tap a choice to notify a member of staff to bring you the requested items because the sale associate would see the request via an iPad app.
When a member of staff gets the request from the fitting room the app doesn’t just notify them that someone requested help from the fitting room. Instead, the app goes a step further by informationing them the exact style, colour and size as well as the exact location where the items are. If the items aren’t at the shop floor then then app will notify a member of staff in the stock room.
Check out process:
Ones the customer press “I’m ready to check out” button and a member of staff will come out with their iPad to complete the purchase. If the customer wants to purchase the products afterward then they will instantaneously get a text message with the link they can purchase the all items they tried.
Benefits:
- Retailors can see how quickly and frequently its member of staff respond to requests made via the interactive mirror from shoppers
- Retailors can get a better insight of what products people are purchasing from the ones the take into the fitting room because a product could be taken into the fitting room multiple times but it doesn’t mean it be ending up in people’s shopping basket.
- There are multi language settings within the mirror which allows customers from over the world to be able to use the innovate mirror because sometimes language barrier can be a downside of a customer walking out of the shop empty handed because they’re unable to get the help the wanted
Drawbacks:
- The interactive mirrors are expensive to set up but for luxury brands like Gucci it could be something to increase the shopping experience they provide for their consumers and bring them to another level.
Gucci adopting to smart mirror:
With Gucci being one of the best luxury brand across the global, it would be an amazing investment for them to adopt the innovative mirrors in their stores because this can bring the shopping at Gucci store to another level by combining future technology to luxury shopping experience. If people are spending thousands and thousands of pounds into buying Gucci products they would want their moneys wroth not just in quality, branding and service because Gucci can proof to them that they are the best in the luxury market by bring store experience to another level.
GUCCI TECHNOLOGY 