Daniel Langer is the founder and CEO of consulting firm Équité There is a dangerous illusion in the luxury industry.
When brands want to elevate their client experience, they often look for the radical shift. They obsess over the hardware.
They redesign flagship stores to make a visual statement. They try to reinvent the sequencing of the customer journey in hopes that a new process will magically create a luxury perception.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what luxury actually is.
The myth of the unique sequence
I have analyzed hundreds of luxury brands and conducted countless interviews with ultra-high-net-worth individuals to determine what separates a memorable experience from a catastrophic one.
The data is clear. It is rarely about the design of the venue or a drastic change in the steps of service.
The difference is purely emotional. When an experience is outstanding, the client feels valued. When the experience is catastrophic the client feels devalued.
Brands often chase things that make a visual difference while misunderstanding that emotional design is everything.
We need to be honest about the mechanics of service. The actual steps of a customer journey are remarkably consistent regardless of the price point.
Consider a recent stay I had at the Cheval Blanc in Paris. It is arguably one of the finest hotels in the world with the best customer service I ever experienced in luxury hospitality.
Yet if you strip away the emotion the sequence of events is identical to a budget hotel. You arrive. You check in.
You go to your room. You sleep. You check out. The sequence does not change.
The same applies to aviation. Whether you fly a low-cost carrier or Singapore Airlines, the process is the same.
You board. You sit. You eat. You land.
The misunderstanding lies in thinking that innovation means changing what happens. Real luxury innovation is about changing how it happens.
At the Cheval Blanc or on Singapore Airlines the magic is not in the superficial process sequence. It is in the microscopic details.
It is the thoughtfulness that anticipates a need before I even know I have it. It is the flawlessness of the execution that makes the client feel like the center of the universe.
This does not happen by chance. It happens by design.
The Netflix approach to experiences
To create this feeling, brands need to stop thinking like logistics managers and start thinking like showrunners. A standout luxury experience must be scripted like a great Netflix series.
You need a hook. The opening moment must be unique, strong and immersive.
It must signal immediately that the client has entered a different world. Then you need a celebratory closing that leaves the client wanting more.
But importantly, you need emotional highlights in between. This is where most brands fail.
They treat the luxury journey as a flat line of “elevated” service. But human psychology does not work that way.
We need peaks. We need surprise and delight.
We need the plot of the store visit to engage us emotionally. This requires defining a specific target emotion and create an emotional arc throughout the journey.
If you do not know exactly how you want your client to feel at every specific touchpoint you are leaving the experience to chance.
Solving the client’s reality
A critical part of this emotional scripting is understanding the client’s psychological mindset. You cannot force a luxury ceremony on a client who is stressed or in a rush.
I recently experienced a perfect example of this during a mystery shopping audit at a major airport in Asia.
I walked into a top-tier luxury boutique. Usually, the sales advisor would immediately launch into a rehearsed script about the heritage of the brand or the latest collection.
This advisor did something different. He asked me a practical question.
He asked where my departure gate was and what time I needed to board. When I told him my gate, he realized I had limited time and a long walk ahead.
He told me that if I wanted to browse the store without stress, he would reserve an electric cart to drive me directly to the gate. He then asked if I planned to visit the lounge for breakfast.
When I said yes, he offered to arrange coffee and a croissant right there in the store to save me the extra stop.
The verdict
In that moment he did not sell me anything. He offered me time and peace of mind.
He acknowledged my stress and he solved it. The result was that I bought more than I anticipated.
The sequence of browsing a store at an airport is standard. But by infusing it with extreme empathy and a hyper-personal solution he transformed a transaction into a memory, translated into hard monetary outcome for the brand.
The reason: he made me feel valued. This is the essence of extreme value creation, the term I created to define luxury.
It is not about reinventing the steps of the sale. It is about infusing every single step with a level of humanity and precision that makes the experience feel differently and signals to client that they are the most important person in the room.
My advice: Stop obsessing over the process. Start obsessing over the emotion.
That’s true luxury. Are you ready?
Luxury Unfiltered is a weekly column by Daniel Langer. He is the CEO of Équité, a global luxury strategy and creative brand activation firm, where he is the advisor to some of the most iconic luxury brands. He is recognized as a global top-five luxury key opinion leader. He serves as the executive professor of luxury strategy and pricing at Pepperdine University in Malibu and as a professor of luxury at New York University, New York. Dr. Langer has authored best-selling books on luxury management in English and Chinese and is a respected global keynote speaker.
Dr. Langer conducts masterclass management training on various luxury topics around the world. As a luxury expert featured on Bloomberg TV, Financial Times, The New York Times, Forbes, The Economist and others, Mr. Langer holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in luxury management and has received education from Harvard Business School. Follow him on LinkedIn and Instagram, and listen to his Future of Luxury Podcast.