Introduction

In April 2005, I wrote an article titled “Can the luxury fashion brand atmosphere be transferred to the Internet?” which was published on Brandchannel. corn. Within days, my inbox was flooded with emails from people all over the world with comments, opinions and incessant questions about this new business area that had become crucial in luxury management. The emails were mostly from luxury brand executives, entrepreneurs, analysts, academics and students with the common interest of understanding how luxury can be successfully presented online. The majority of the messages revealed major concerns about e-branding and e-commerce and others questioned the challenges of understanding online luxury clients, and yet other messages expressed urgency in identifying a coherent manner of communicating online while preserving all the qualities of luxury. Some people also wrote to tell me that they thought I was nuts to believe that luxury should be placed online as the Internet was a mass medium that has nothing in common with luxury. One gentleman actually went as far as saying that I was living in a bubble of my own imagination. However, in general, the undertone of most of the messages was apprehension, perplexity and some disorientation towards luxury online.