Luxury Institute News

February 19, 2013

Wealthy Flock To Target But Love The Lord & Taylor Experience, Prefer Apple For Electronics, Staples For Supplies

Posted in Customer Experience,LCEI,Luxury Brands,Wealthy Consumer
Tags: Apple, Best Buy, Customer Culture Institute, Customer Experience, Lord & Taylor, Milton Pedraza, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Target, Von Maur —

(NEW YORK) February 19, 2013 – U.S. shoppers earning at least $150,000 a year rank 16 mainstream retailers in the 2013 Luxury Consumer Experience (LCEI) survey jointly conducted by the independent and objective New York-based Luxury Institute and Customer Culture Institute. Respondents evaluated national and regional department store brands, as well retailers of office supplies and electronics.

Among national retailers, Lord & Taylor earns the highest (8.00) LCEI score, and ranks first on all seven subcomponents, which include shoppers’ evaluations of staff, stores and degree of overall satisfaction. Lord & Taylor was visited by just 14% of surveyed shoppers in the past year but those who did rave about their experiences. Target, the most popular chain, saw visits from 66% of wealthy shoppers but earns a 6.90 LCEI score.

In electronics, Apple’s LCEI score of 8.40 tops Best Buy’s 6.97. Apple also enjoys nearly unanimous (98%) agreement from shoppers that they will come back to Apple retail locations in the future, compared to 92% for Best Buy.

Staples (7.31) is the clear winner in office supplies, ranked ahead of Office Depot (7.05) and OfficeMax (7.00).

Iowa-based Von Maur receives the highest LCEI score (8.61) among regional retailers and the highest of all 16 brands covered. Furthermore, 100% of Von Maur’s wealthy customers plan to shop there again.

“Wealthy consumers don’t confine their shopping to luxury retailers. In fact, they spend much more with mainstream brands,” says Luxury Institute and Customer Culture Institute CEO Milton Pedraza. “As in luxury, brands that differentiate themselves with a customer centric culture are the ones that rank highest.”

About Luxury Institute (www.LuxuryInstitute.com)
The Luxury Institute is the objective and independent global voice of the high net-worth consumer. The Institute conducts extensive and actionable research with wealthy consumers about their behaviors and attitudes on customer experience best practices. In addition, we work closely with top-tier luxury brands to successfully transform their organizational cultures into more profitable customer-centric enterprises. Our Luxury CRM Culture consulting process leverages our fact-based research and enables luxury brands to dramatically Outbehave as well as Outperform their competition. The Luxury Institute also operates LuxuryBoard.com, a membership-based online research portal, and the Luxury CRM Association, a membership organization dedicated to building customer-centric luxury enterprises.

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February 12, 2013

Applying Best Practices Of High-End Retail, Luxury Institute Founder Launches Customer Culture Institute To Help Mainstream Brands Build Better Relationships, Boost Sales

Posted in CRM,Customer Culture,Press Releases
Tags: Customer Culture Institute, Luxury Institute, Milton Pedraza —

(NEW YORK) February 12, 2013- Milton Pedraza, founder and CEO of the Luxury Institute (www.luxuryinstitute.com), the leading global independent research and consulting firm in the luxury industry, has launched the Customer Culture Institute (www.customercultureinstitute.com). The objective Customer Culture Institute is focused on helping mainstream brands across all industries and geographies to rapidly design, deploy and reinforce customer-centric cultures that leverage their unique competitive positions.

“Customer acquisition, conversion, and retention rates for most brands are dismal,” says Pedraza, one of the world’s most respected and independent CRM experts since 1997. “Digital technology, social media, Big Data, and multi-channel access are getting all of the attention these days. However, the most important element in order for brands to outperform and, more importantly, outbehave their competition is a customer culture.

Pedraza has developed and licensed a proprietary Customer Culture process to the Luxury Institute and will do the same with the Customer Culture Institute. The newly formed institute will provide clients from diverse industries with Pedraza’s collaborative seven-step process that includes developing relationship-building techniques, education, incentives and measurement for customer facing employees and ultimately drives higher sales.

“A great deal of business today is purely transactional when it should be relationship-driven and more humanistic,” says Pedraza. “At the Luxury Institute, we have proven through engagements with world-class clients that customer data collection, conversion, retention, recovery and referrals go up dramatically as a customer culture takes hold.”

The Customer Culture Institute is presently adding staff and seeking more like-minded and passionate individuals specialized in particular industries to represent the institute in the U.S. and in key overseas markets. For information, please visit www.customercultureinstitute.com to fill out a contact form.

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