Digital sales of luxury goods were slow to take off, trailing many other sectors, but online luxury shopping now is gaining rapidly, spurred by sales of lower-end luxury goods and by younger shoppers accustomed to purchasing practically everything online.
In the "2018 State of the Luxury Industry” report by the Luxury Institute, affluent shoppers conducted 38% of their luxury buys digitally. A majority (52%) still preferred buying luxury goods in-store, a drop of 2 percentage points from 2017, while 21% preferred online, a gain of 2 percentage points. Twenty-seven percent did not have a preference. The study surveyed affluent consumers in the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China and Mexico.
“What you're seeing today is a tremendous amount of trust and also a tremendous need for convenience,” said Milton Pedraza, CEO of Luxury Institute. Due to vigilance from brands and online retailers, counterfeiting fears aren’t what they used to be, and Amazon has acclimated shoppers to free shipping and easy returns.
According to a February 2018 McKinsey & Company study using Forrester and Euromonitor data, digital luxury sales worldwide are expected to make up 12% of all luxury retail sales by 2020, with that percentage growing to 19% by 2025.