Website Localization for Luxury

An added cost, or a necessity?

The importance of website localization for luxury fashion e-commerce retailers is ever-growing. Users purchasing luxury fashion prefer to interact with and purchase products from websites in their native language, which lowers their customer insecurity. Additionally, they prefer websites that offer excellent customer service, safe environment, localized information and services, in order to satisfy their needs. This study focuses on filling the gap that exists in localization literature connecting website localization and electronic commerce for luxury fashion. The study was conducted with case studies, focusing on four of the most prominent luxury fashion retailers. Content analysis was used to retrieve data, with which the localization level of the websites was measured. Combining the level of localization and the rest of the data retrieved from the websites, the researcher was able to indicate the localization strategies of the e-retailers. The findings of the research indicate that one of the retailers was localized to a very high degree, two of them were localized to a medium to a high level, while the fourth retailer was semi-localized. The main conclusions of the research were that despite their different levels of localization, the retailers maintain their main characteristics, images, and brand names the same across all of their localized versions, thus including some standardization in their strategy, in order to protect their brand identity and westernized image of luxury fashion that is idealized by affluent young people. However, there should be more effort for the inclusion of more locales and a higher degree of cultural customization, since e-commerce is the future of fashion.