Bvlgari flagship store experience: Review and Reflexion

On an early winter afternoon when the outside temperature in Geneva was around 3°C, it's a good idea to step into a luxury store for mystery shopping. We chose the Bvlgari flagship store on Rue du Rhône 30. 

Our scenario was that we are a group of friends including one future bride and we were looking for a necklace with a ruby central stone for her wedding. That was a weekday and there was one other guest in the store, so we didn’t have to wait. The Sales staff was friendly and treated us as customers. She asked in detail about my friend’s wedding and how the necklace we’re looking for, how her wedding dress would be to introduce the most suitable necklaces to us. We chatted for 30 minutes, and my friend tried on one necklace at their customer lounge. Although we didn’t find a necklace as she expected, we exchanged contact information with the sales staff to get the news for the upcoming products. 

We would say that we had a nice experience, but there are things that are not fulfilled. The store has tranquil space and beautiful exhibits, nonetheless we neither established a sense of inclusivity nor really immersed ourselves. Relating to our previous blog post, Bvlgari are doing very well to bring the life-like experience to their e-commerce, however, their brick-and-mortar store doesn’t really take advantage of the opportunity to interact with customers in the real world. It seems that the store manager just focuses on visuals and ignores the potential of telling a cohesive brand story with all five senses. The store didn’t have the taste, smell and sound which can create an emotional and memorable experience (Danziger, 2019). Touch is particularly important in product design and, to some degree, store design (Schmitt, 2020) but the store interior design didn’t appeal to our sense of touch and the product display was not inviting to touch as well. We found the store's ambience was a bit old. As young customers, we expect the store to be more dynamic and brighter, especially on a cloudy winter day. 

There are many identities in Bvlgari. We can see that Bvlgari's classic snake image is not only reflected in its jewelry and handbag collections but also in the store's decoration. Gorgeous, individual and dynamic. The Serpenti jewelry collection was deservedly placed in the front and with the addition of different colored stones, it was able to catch the customers' eyes first. At the same time the darker lighting design showed the mysterious atmosphere of Bvlgari. The collection of The Serpenti jewelry collection is also prominently displayed on the brochures in the customer reception area. Although the Serpenti may sound very cold and resourceful, Bvlgari's sales staff is very approachable, asking customers what they want while at the same time bringing them closer to each other. Elegant, mysterious and warm, this is probably the brand identity of Bvlgari.

The store had tranquil space and beautiful exhibits, nonetheless we neither established a sense of inclusivity nor really immersed ourselves.

Even in the luxury boutique, we can always improve different aspects. During the mystery shopping at Bvlgari in Geneva, the first impression was the size of the boutique. It is totally sufficient to show its actual collection but is a bit small to expose all its previous jewelry, but at least it focuses the customer on a specific product such as the Serpenti collection. The boutique size does not allow a private experience to try the jewelry, which can be very important for few of its customers. As an example, one client was talking with the seller and trying a bracelet. Even if we were mystery clients, we were totally able to hear the entire discussion while we were looking at the showcase which was near them. While we were looking at the different showcases and waiting for our seller, we were a little disappointed to not have access to more information about the beautiful pieces. The boutique may add a short text that explains the jewelry story, or if they prefer to be more digitized, to create a QR code that led to the jewelry story. The other potential amelioration could be a better emotional and personal experience. The welcoming was more conventional and strict than warm, but there was someone to greet us five seconds after we had walked in. The seller we talked with was looking to get a lot of information about us, and few of them were not really helping her to understand which jewelry could be perfect for us. Also, we were expecting to get more details about the story about the creation of the necklace we were trying. In any case, the Bulgari boutique visit as a mystery client was a formidable moment and this global luxury experience has been inspirational.

The Luxaholic Team

REFERENCE 

Schmitt, B., Morhart, F., Wilcox, K., & Czellar, S. (2020). Chapter 12: Sensuality and Experience. Research Handbook on Luxury Branding (pp. 208–223). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Danziger, P. N. (2019). Retailers Need To Engage Shoppers’ Five Senses To Save Physical Retail. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2019/08/04/retailers-need-to-engage-shoppers-five-senses-to-save-physical-retail/?sh=60d4c6485634