The Expertise of Emotionally Intelligent Luxury

On May 11, 2021, Milton Pedraza, CEO of Luxury Institute, ignited an exciting discussion with three of the top experts in luxury beauty on The Future of Luxury Beauty & Wellness: -Oliver Garfield, CEO & Board Member of Cos Bar -Anne Talley, Beauty Executive & Consultant, Former GM of L'Oréal, Brand President of Revlon, and Brand Incubator at Walmart -Claire McCormack, Senior Edito...

Digital Transformation (DT) is a term that inspires awe as well as fear in the hearts and minds of premium and luxury goods and services brand executives. On one hand, executives have a fear of being left behind. On the other, they are so often bombarded with mixed messages and content about what DT is, and isn’t, especially in an industry that uniquely values customer relationships and human touc...

On Tuesday, March 23, 2021, Luxury Institute welcomed Jack Ezon of Embark Beyond, Shannon Knapp of The Leading Hotels of the World, and Ben Trodd of Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts to share the challenges and abundant opportunities of reigniting the luxury hospitality industry in 2021 and beyond.  Milton Pedraza, Luxury Institute CEO, and Kathleen Shea, a luxury hospitality and lifestyle leader...

On April 5th, we launched our latest white paper on the New Rules for Reinventing your Business Model to Drive Customer-Centricity. Despite the pandemic, the ranks of the wealthy around the world continue to grow in size. Younger affluent consumers are digital natives. They have dramatically different expectations and are redefining what “customer-centricity” actually means. The brands that will f...

Luxury Institute CEO and DataLucent Chairman, Milton Pedraza, welcomed Dr. Augustine Fou, a marketer of 25 years, steeped in how digital has transformed the world and marketing. Dr. Fou helps marketers audit their digital campaigns for ad fraud and optimize campaigns based on accurate analytics. He has witnessed the entire arc of the evolution of digital marketing, since the mid-90's.  Dr. Au...

In 2021, and moving forward, one of the most important ways that a brand can measure customer loyalty is by how much data and insights their customers are willing to share with them, legally and ethically, for fair value rewards and personalization. Enterprise start-ups that are starved of customer data will never take off, and incumbents that can’t achieve, or suddenly lose, customer trust will v...

The Luxury Institute has announced the launch of its Advanced Personalization Xchange (APX) , a unique proprietary technology platform that enables affluent consumers to provide access to their rich, relevant and highly predictive personal data to premium and luxury brands in exchange for rewards and benefits, while maintaining full legal control of their data. APX is the first of its kind, opt-in...

Luxury Institute meta-research from across the globe indicates that the post COVID-19 landscape for consumer brands, and especially for luxury goods and services brands, is a potential minefield due to rapidly escalating consumer concerns for personal data privacy. Consumers are becoming activists on many social issues, and all surveys conducted in 2019-2020 by credible institutions such as Pew, I...

“Edge AI is a dramatic breakthrough. It completely redesigns machine learning into a secure, private, cost efficient and effective process,” said Milton Pedraza Luxury Institute CEO. “The Cloud AI providers, such as Amazon and Google, know that Edge AI is the future, yet, are unwilling to disrupt their rapidly growing, highly profitable cloud AI businesses in order to serve the best interests of t...

The biggest customer experience opportunity, pandemic, or not, is to understand and embrace the skills that support the blending of digital and emotional intelligence. To optimize their digital strategy brands must embrace the fact that they will need to master three critical skills: personal data expertise, AI expertise, and emotional intelligence expertise. Everything else, including product inn...

The proliferation of digital access during the pandemic has created a world where consumers are able to interact and transact without engaging directly with humans, and many may prefer it. Digital access with no human contact has clear advantages, especially for purchasing low-value commodity goods. However, affluent consumers will still have the basic need to interact with trusted expert advisors...

Milton Pedraza, Luxury Institute CEO, and Zornitza Stefanova, BSPK Founder and CEO, discuss building client relationships with emotional intelligence in the digital age. COVID-19 is prompting a massive shift to digital across industries, particularly in luxury.  Ralph Lauren and Prada said recently they were expanding digital services. And Bain raised its forecast for luxury e-commerce by five per...

In the post pandemic personal data economy, a brand’s privileged access to relevant, rich, and real-time customer data will be the major driver of economic and competitive advantage. As customers are empowered by legislation, and a rapidly growing community of ethical, innovative entrepreneurs and trusted intermediary services to take full control of their personal data, they will be selective abo...

Citizens of the world have endured months of living through the COVID-19 pandemic experience. When we are past the worst of the crisis, we will not be the same, but we know from history that there will be many major opportunities for economic prosperity. How can luxury business leaders take creative, effective steps right now to shift the growth curve to a higher plane, with a steeper growth traje...

Milton Pedraza, Luxury Institute CEO, hosted a live webinar on the future of privacy and personalization in the luxury industry, including research, trends, and use cases that can advise luxury goods and services executives. Follow us @officialluxuryinstitute | Contact us LuxuryInstitute.com

Milton Pedraza, Luxury Institute CEO, and former Google Senior Executive and GLIAnet Project and Foundation President, Richard Whitt, discuss their co-authored white paper Empowering Personal Data For Exponential Economic Growth. Post pandemic, the rapid evolution of the personal data economy will have huge implications for the luxury industry. The industry is one where client relationships are an...

Tough times bring out the best in most human beings and institutions. In order to help companies prepare to reignite their luxury businesses post-pandemic, Luxury Institute is conducting on-going primary and secondary research with clients and constituents, as well as external sources, to identify some key potential best practices. For Luxury Institute, the goal is to provide recommendations to th...

The world is in a state of fear and anxiety. It’s all hands-on deck. Governments, healthcare entities, businesses and citizens must all come together to survive the crisis and begin to thrive again. In order to provide key insights and recommendations that are actionable, Luxury Institute reached out to all members of its Global Luxury Expert Network who are operating at the front lines of the glo...

One out of three high-income shoppers likes to interact with a sales associate when shopping for luxury goods, 35% cite helpful sales professionals as a top factor in doing business with a brand, and 15% of consumers say that a relationship with a sales associate is a primary driver of luxury goods buying decisions. Luxury Institute’s State of the Luxury Industry 2020 report, based on surveys of m...

Affluent U.S. consumers demand stringent safeguards on the security and privacy of their personal data from companies that collect their information, according to a new Luxury Institute survey of Americans earning at least $150,000 per year. They also demand true personalization in exchange for their data.  With several high-profile breaches of customer data kept by merchants, credit card companie...

To generate the trends likely to affect the luxury industry in 2020, Luxury Institute conducted a crowdsourcing project with its Global Luxury Expert Network at the end of 2019. The Global Luxury Expert Network (GLEN) is a growing network of hundreds of luxury goods and services experts who form the core of Luxury Institute’s research, training, and business solutions teams. The network is made up...

Luxury is going through another transformational phase. Unfortunately, in times of change, there is so much noise in the system that it is very difficult to hone in on the true signal. Myths abound with respect to the definition of luxury and luxury consumers. Today, anyone who feels empowered by the chaos, declares themselves a luxury expert and proceeds to declare what they know to be the ultima...

Today, consumers and goods and services brands have been persuaded by digital ad platforms that privacy and personalization are mutually exclusive. The operating assumption is that individuals need to compromise their data, and their privacy, in order to get “free” services and personalization. That is a false choice. The reality is that the Big Tech ecosystem is only the first chapter in the life...

Recently, the Luxury Institute conducted one-on-one interviews with its Global Luxury Expert Network (GLEN) members including senior global luxury luminaries, entrepreneurs, and start-up founders to explore one critical topic: in this digitally connected, algorithmic world, what is the future role of the human front-line associate across luxury channels? The candid and passionate discussion yielde...

To generate the trends likely to affect the luxury industry in 2019, the Luxury Institute initiated a crowdsourcing project with its global consulting unit, the Global Luxury Expert Network (GLEN). Collectively, Luxury Institute is comprised of the world’s largest network of elite, on-demand luxury consultants who provide real-time, effective solutions for luxury clients at a fraction of the cost...