Luxury Experience: Magical or Mundane?

Chairs

• Lionel Barber, Editor The Financial Times
  
• Guy Salter, Walpole Deputy Chairman

Speakers

• Paul Bennett Creative Director, IDEO
  
• Martin Hayward, Director of Consumer Strategy & Futures, Dunnhumby
  
• John Howkins President & CEO Wunderman
  
• Antony Sheriff, Managing Director, McLAREN Automotive
  
• Stephen Alden, CEO, Maybourne Group (Claridges, The Connaught, The Berkeley)
  
• Dr Rai Persaud, Consultant Psychiatrist, Bethlem Royal and Maudsely Hospitals
  
• Johnny Roxburgh, Founder, The Admirable Crichton
  
• Michael Ward, Managing Director, Harrods

Reasserting the Human Dimension

Luxury businesses pioneered the concept that the customer comes first and that personal service is as important as exquisite product. But as their customer base has expanded beyond recognition and their brands grown in size and number, have they lost their way?

Have they lost touch with the human dimension? Does this eroding of a founding principle matter? Or is treating customers like people an unrealistic luxury?

New research suggests an alarming disconnect between how luxury companies and luxury consumers view their relationship.

Walpole believes that the industry is now at a tipping point and faces critical consumer-driven changes which question the conventional luxury business model. Of these the most important is the poor record of developing two-way relationships with customers. Re-engaging the human element is one of the most significant challenges for the luxury sector over the next five years. Yet it is also one of its greatest opportunities, as other non-luxury companies have demonstrated.

The Walpole Luxury Experience: Magical or Mundane? Seminar brought together leading experts, analysts and successful practitioners to provide new insights into this complex conundrum.

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