DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2014.90
title: Luxury fashion brands in Thailand: a study of on-line purchase behavior

description: In the recent years, luxury fashion industry has vastly expanded in Thailand, more than 30 luxury fashion brands have opened to serve an increasing demand of luxury products. This expanded number of luxury brands indicates there are rising of income levels as well as purchasing power. Luxury fashion brands, for example, like Chanel, Dior, Mulberry and Balenciaga are gaining more recognition and acceptant among Thai consumers that pursue sophisticated hi-style of living.The competition of luxury fashion industry has become stronger. Not only traditional marketing activities, for example, like advertisings and events are being used. Social media are now taking an important role to stimulate trends and demand. The growing of popularity of social media, for instant, Facebook and Instagram is creating a remarkable impact on sales and brand popularity. As a rapid growth in the number of internet users, it is a great opportunity for luxury fashion business to get closer to consumer.Club 21, a company from Singapore established by an entrepreneur-hotelier Christina Ong in 1972, as a leading importer and distributor in luxury fashion goods in Thailand has developed the marketing strategy in order to stimulate sales performance in 2013. Both vertical and horizontal expansion was developed under strategic marketing movement. Apart from traditional marketing activities, Club 21 was known as a fashion company with a best practice in leveraging online channel in order to enhancing customer shopping experience.For this reason, this study is proposed has a goal to understand online purchasing behavior of Club 21 (Thailand) consumer by investigating their online decision making process and find out influential factors that related to each decision process as well as perception towards Club 21 (Thailand). The objective of this study is to understand consumer insights and their behaviors which  are  significant  for  Club  21  (Thailand)  to  set  up  effective  strategies  for  digital communication plan and to develop their E-Commerce to be the efficient channel for consumer to access the product and customer service.In this study, qualitative research will be collected data from 18 – 24 Club 21 (Thailand) customers who living in Bangkok area by one-on-one interviews. In-depth interview will be entirely conducted by the researcher with Naturalistic Inquiries. The criteria of respondents profile will focus on people have buying luxury fashion brand experience as well as purchasing through online channel experience to make a certain that researcher will have related insights into  the  research  topic. Snowballing method will be used as a recruitment to obtain respondents. Main findings from this study include the keys barriers of online purchasing intention among Thai female consumers, for example, concerns about safety of personal information and inability to touch and feel the product. All findings in this study highlight important marketing intelligence which useful for fashion luxury players to consider and understand consumer in technology era.