Digitalising Heritage: organizational challenges in bringing luxury into the digital world

Luxury companies are lagging behind in implementing a properly digital transformation strategy as they have always been hesitant to invest online, holding the belief that their customers prefer the contact with the physical touchpoints (i.e. the product, the store, the shop assistant, etc.) rather than an interaction with a digital interface. This was mostly due to the complexity of digitalizing the offer of firms that showed complex value propositions, based on values such as heritage and craftsmanship. The translation of such values in digital environments was perceived as very challenging and potentially very dangerous. Only recently luxury companies embraced digitalization to ameliorate the relationship with customers and create a valuable customer experience. This strategic decision has brought a new organization problem to such companies, i.e. how to integrate digitalization into structures that have been focus on very traditional craftsman processes and driven by the heritage and historical stature of the brand for decades. The objective of this research is therefore to understand, from an organizational point of view, what challenges luxury companies should face to be integrated digitalization competencies into their present set of knowledge and skills that is heavily related to the values do craftsmanship and brand heritage. In order to provide meaningful result, the empirical investigation focused on the champagne industry as it shows all the critical aspects.