Digitalization : the transformation of the frontline employees’ roles in luxury brands

• Autor(a) principal: Saldanha, Catarina Oliveira Santos Branco
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/34778
• topic: Digitalization; Luxury; Frontline employee roles; Sales assistants; Luxury experience; Employee-customer relationship; Fashion; Clienteling; Digitalização; Luxo; Assistentes de venda; Experiência do luxo; Relação empregado-cliente; Moda; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The luxury employees’ roles face a gap. Previous literature examines the importance of employees’ roles in the luxury field. However, when it comes to the influence of digital roles, it was formerly studied, but not in the luxury setting. This thesis examines how digitalization influence the employees’ roles to create a luxury experience. To answer my research question, I conducted a comparative case study on four companies: Versace, Gucci, Loja das Meias and Josefinas. My findings show that employees’ roles are not only “enablers”, “innovators”, “differentiators” and “coordinators”, but also “educators”, “personal shopper” and “clienteling”. Moreover, my results show that the digital augmentation role influences “enabler”, “coordinator”, and “innovator” roles and the digital network facilitator role affects the other employees’ roles.