Luxury ecosystems : towards a new modus operandi for high-end brands in a changing world of luxury

Current forces of change such as the digital transformation, the increasing importance of service and experiential luxury, new customer groups with diverse cultural backgrounds and spending habits or rising expectations with regards to transparency and sustainability, force brands to rethink the way they do business. In some cases, this means quickly building up new capabilities, which often exist outside a company’s own organizational structure and cannot easily be developed or integrated. Luxury ecosystems are considered one way of dealing with the challenges of an ever more dynamic, fast-changing and multi- faceted environment. In luxury ecosystems, capabilities are built in collaboration with partners from the same or different industries that share a common vision. However, the ecosystem approach, especially when actively communicated to the outside world and made part of the brand’s DNA, partially stands in contrast to the more traditional notion of exclusivity and the luxury brand as a bounded, proprietary system shrouded in mystery. Based on a qualitative approach, including multiple case studies and interviews, this study examines the opportunities of an ecosystem mindset for Swiss luxury companies, explores different forms and identifies the success factors and limits of the concept