The Pleasure analysis: Did Bvlgari achieve 10s across the board?

For this blog’s weekly assignment we would like to evaluate our mystery shop experience in the Bvlgari boutique, one of Cartier’s main competitors.

Having visited Cartier, before going to the Bvlgari’s store, heightened our expectations, in some way we were treated like guests of honor, so the competitor really needed to step it up its best game.

Before going to the boutique, we already had contact with the brand through their online channel, where we started feeling the brand experience and we must admit, it was a good one. 
When you enter the website, you are introduced to a guided and personalized experience. Indeed, the first thing you notice on the page is the little banner aiming to stand in the function of the sales people in the digital universe.

And once you click the pop – up function, you are guided through your whole online – customer journey:

Furthermore, the rest of the online experience showed, almost, the commitment to achieve a 360º omnichannel experience. There is a clear link to boutiques, the sales people, the services in – store and online, the story – telling and the visuals; it seems that every micro moment is handled properly to create an immersive brand experience even online.  

So, did Bvlgari lived up the expectations? Let’s check it out together, step by step, by analyzing the experiential perspective with the „pleasure dimensions “:

Forword: 

The set – up of our mystery shopping in Bvlgari was created around the story of one of us being a bride who needed a necklace for the dress.

Our customer journey started with great visuals, the store showed its brand signature colors since the beginning: warm colors (red, brown and orange) and whites. At first we were not convinced about the colors, as in contrast to Cartier, they may have a more colorful store, so the eyes were stimulated continuously and it may become tiring after a while. 

Eventually, we realized that the store included some pieces of art, that we will talk about later.

The store space was moderately tight, indeed, as soon as one enters the store, that person may feel a bit suffocated due to the high number of glass showcases.
The smell – dimension was pleasant, as you could slightly sense the notes of the cinnamon scent, which does not become annoying to the nose after some time. No music was played in the boutique.

Continuing the customer journey talk, when we experienced the contact with the employee, that changed everything. We presented ourselves as the bride and her friends. However, because we were not as prepared as we wanted to be, we kept our Cartier’s bags with us and the salesperson-woman immediately asked if we were students, as she saw other people with the same bag. But, we still wanted to achieve our experience, so we pretended not to be students, and we can tell she has great training in pleasing customer; because she knew our game and decided anyway to give us the whole Bvlgari experience. 

She asked diverse questions to understand our ‘’bride – to – be’’ taste, so we had to come up with ideas to keep going with our game, and thank God we had Pardis (our ‘’bride’’) with us, because she was very quick with ‘’mystery shopping’’ skills (aka lying). 
We really gave specific details about the dress, the number of people, the theme, the hair, the hypothetical jewelry, the date of the wedding. 
After collecting insights, the sales associate suggested to take a look at one of their necklaces from their Diva Collection:

And because the show was still in place, we decided to be hyper – picky and take a look at multiple necklaces. The salesperson did not have any problem with that, and she took her time with us. 

In the end, we preferred one of the necklaces from the Diva collection made with rubies.  The woman suggested immediately to try out the product, and so we did:

In the meanwhile, we were offered to have a glass of champagne, but because we are diligent students we didn’t accept (we do regret that btw). 
The person in charge was very skilled in social interaction, especially because she was able to build cognitive touchpoints with us for everything we mentioned. Indeed, as soon as one of our colleagues mentioned that he is from South America, she took that occasion to help us deepen our learning experience of the brand. She told us about the concept of the store and she explained that, every while and then, the store selects some artists and showcases their creations. The artist displayed in that moment was from Brazil, and she started to elaborate more on the concept behind the art in the store.

When our bride mentioned that she was from Iran, the employee was able to give us the contact of the owner of a very interesting bar in Geneva, so that we could go and tell him that we knew her. She was really able to keep the conversation ongoing and make us connect with the brand.

Eventually, we finished the visit and the salesperson asked for the bride’s contact to give her personalized and preferential treatment via WhatsApp.

Moreover, she gave us a booklet with all the Bvlgari collections available in the store and to order. 

For the sake of the experience, we finished our customer journey by going to the recommended bar and, indeed, we were attended very well by the owner of the store.

In conclusion, we can say that Bvlgari did live up to the expectations, they are doing a great job by correctly implementing all the pleasure dimensions. They managed to convey all the brand identity, especially through the salespeople. We really felt comfortable and not like outsiders, they gave us everything they promised: the feel – and – touch, the story – telling, great visuals, good managing of the customer journey (from the moment we stepped in and even after going out from the boutique). The only recommendation we could give to improve the luxury identity experience at the boutique touch points is about the speed; we entered the store but no one was there to immediately serve the customers, this was in our opinion a bit harsh because in Cartier the salespeople were everywhere.