The future, we’re told, is already upon us. From healthcare and finance to retail and customer service, artificial intelligence (AI) has infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives. Sometimes it’s invisible to end users, like when AI systems are used to detect unusual financial transactions or fraudulent activity in real-time. At other times, it’s patently obvious, in the case of chatbot assistants or this article’s own text-to-speech tool.
In the luxury space, many, if not all luxury brands, are leveraging some form of AI to deliver personalised shopping experiences and product recommendations. Behind the scenes, AI is helping luxury brands in their ongoing quest for sustainability by optimising supply chains and reducing waste, while also helping to combat counterfeit products more effectively than ever before.
While that’s great for shopaholics and and the earth, I’m not convinced that we’re living in the Jetsons age just yet. If you pay a visit to any luxury brand boutique in Orchard Road for example, you won’t find any instances of AI being used – no AI sales assistants greeting you at the door, nor touchscreens for you to tinker around with for product recommendations.
And then there is the example of chatbots. They’ve been around for ages, yet the user experience still leaves much to be desired. I recently interacted with a Louis Vuitton’s rather unwieldy Virtual Advisor while shopping for a travel bag (more on this later). Suffice it to say that I would much rather interact with a human sales assistant at a bricks-and-mortar store.
Perhaps that is the point after all: To drive traffic to the physical retail location so that consumers can immerse themselves in the full brand experience. Because surely a powerhouse like Louis Vuitton would have the wherewithal to iron out the kinks in its AI-powered chatbots? Deep pockets aside, LVMH is also one of the most forward-minded luxury groups, having twice hosted the LVMH Data AI Summit in Paris, thereby positioning itself front and centre in the AI race.
But as luxury industry observer Daniel Langer, CEO of Equite, notes in Jing Daily, luxury is about extreme value creation. “Too many brands and organisations just embrace a new technology because everyone is doing it instead of asking themselves how they can create extreme value for their clients in a way that is unique to the brand.”
