Luxury fashion house Burberry and Chinese technology powerhouse Tencent have entered into an exclusive partnership to develop social retail in China.
Social media is playing an increasingly important role in inspiring luxury consumers alongside the store experience and the customer journey between these two touchpoints is becoming more fluid. Through this partnership, Burberry and Tencent will pioneer a concept that blends social media and retail to create digital and physical spaces for engaged communities to interact, share and shop.
The first step will be for Burberry to open a store, powered by Tencent technology, offering unique experiences that connect luxury customers’ social and online lives to their physical environments. This will be a unique space to test and learn, serving as a laboratory to trial innovation that can be expanded to the rest of the Burberry network in China.
The social retail store will open in Shenzhen, China’s technology hub, in the new Shenzhen Bay MixC development. The store is expected to open in the first half of next year.
Marco Gobbetti, Chief Executive Officer at Burberry commented: “Social media is becoming such an important part of the luxury customer journey, particularly in the inspiration phase, and retail needs to keep pace with this. Continuing our history of innovation, we wanted to explore the connection between these touchpoints by merging social media and the store experience to reflect the way luxury customers are engaging with brands. China was the obvious place to start as it is one of the leading hubs for innovation and technology and Chinese consumers are some of the highest users of social media. We are thrilled to be partnering exclusively with Tencent on this pioneering project which is an example of the step-change in our ambitions for the next phase of our transformation.”
Martin Lau, President of Tencent said: “Through cutting-edge technology, Tencent is committed to creating exceptional experiences for Burberry, consumers and society as a whole. This shows our spirit of harnessing the power of technology to better serve consumers."
Davis Lin, Vice President of Tencent and responsible for Tencent Marketing Solutions said: “We are delighted to partner exclusively with Burberry on social retail in China. The future of retail lies in digitalisation. Through more efficient online-to-offline connections, more personalised engagement and shopping experiences, along with exceptional, differentiated content and value-added services, we will enhance the customer experience and deepen brand loyalty.”
