Assessment of the Retail Environment of 2 Louis Vuitton Stores in Paris

Assessment of the Retail Environment of

Louis Vuitton Champs-Elysées & Louis Vuitton Galeries Lafayette

1. Methodology To analyze the retail case of Louis Vuitton, I picked the flagship store in avenue Champs-Elysées and the store-in-store in Galeries Lafayette, probably two most well-known Louis Vuitton stores in Paris, especially to tourists. Three mysterious visits for each store were made during the trimester, one during the day of a normal weekday, one on Friday evening and the other one during the weekend, to observe the difference of the atmosphere among the 3 typical occasions. During the visits, I tried to pay extreme attention to every details, from the brand of the laptop, to the position of the price tag, and tried to note them down with my camera whenever possible. Besides, I’ve interviewed a former intern who once worked in the Champs-Elysées store during the summer, and got a lot of useful information. Most of the findings have been integrated in the Presentation, with a lot of pictures taken by myself.

2. Story/Scenario

Here’s an interesting story to share during one of my visits to the Champs-Elysées store: I was stopped on avenue Champs-Elysées, about 20 meters away from Louis Vuitton, by 2 Chinese women tourists. They asked me to go to the store and help them purchase some Louis Vuitton products, while they would wait for me at a distant from the store, as the doormen had already recognized them. According to them, after buying 2 men’s wallets, they were not allowed to buy any more. The argument of the sales staff who had served them were: - First, it is the store’s policy that forbids the customers from buying more than 1 piece of the same article; besides, the sales staff claimed that 3 articles were already too much, and it is impossible to buy more. - Second, they don’t WANT to accept cash any more (the two Chinese women had paid cash for the 2 men’s wallets that they just bought). Later, I learned that the store had recently...