Another encounter with Louis Vuitton

With Euro depreciating against RM, some of my family members were eyeing at the relatively deflated French luxury bags.
One asked for a LV bag. And since the closest shops are in Paris, I tried to check out the online option.

The elite webste did not appeal to me. As a customer I prefer wesbite that is intuitive and user friendly. I hope to just enter the product code and find the item immediately instead of going through categories of products and have to look at the photos one by one. Well, it was not the worst and the fact that they only have 20 items per category reduced the searching time.

The website says that it could delivery within 4 business days. And I was leaving in 5 business days. A bit risky I thought. So I called the customer service. Surprisingly, I got a pleasant male voice with perfect French (not those call center in North Africa) and every willingness to help me. He said it would be delivered next week before I leave France but there is no guarantee. Plus, Saturday is not considered as business day. From my experience, when a website says 4 business days it could be delivered before or after what was promised. So I considered it too risky so we just called the whole thing off.

So, no LV bag this trip home.

All these bags buying adventures leads me to think about the marketing strategies for the luxury brands. LV is certainly one of the most successful one. Some of the strategies:

1. Limited distribution channel: only available in touristic cities (Paris, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, cities in South of France)
2. Restricted purchase item: maximum 3 items per person, one item per model
3. Conditioned online purchase: do not delivery to hotel or professional addresses
4. Elegant (or cocky?) customer service: they could refuse to sell you item

Well, the cockier they are, the better their business goes.
It has been an interesting encountered, now I'm in their customer list. They send me their seasonal collection catalog every year (see photo).

PS: Do you think people really bring their LV suitcases to desert?