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The intimacy trap: Navigating the commercial friendships of luxury

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  • Welté, Jean-Baptiste
  • Cayla, Julien
  • Cova, Bernard

Abstract

Given that commercial friendships between luxury salespeople and customers tend to elicit great loyalty from customers, it is relevant and timely to study how luxury salespeople manage these relationships. We build on ethnographic fieldwork in luxury stores, focusing on the interaction between salespeople and habituated luxury customers, to offer an analysis of commercial friendships in these settings. Our findings suggest that luxury foregrounds the importance of secrets and gifts in commercial friendships. Furthermore, the luxury context brings out the darker, more challenging side of commercial friendships. As intimacy develops between salespeople and customers, another kind of relationship emerges in which salespeople are often at the beck and call of their wealthy customers, leading them to fall into the intimacy trap. We propose some pathways to help salespeople manage these critical relationships and to avoid the intimacy trap.

Suggested Citation

  • Welté, Jean-Baptiste & Cayla, Julien & Cova, Bernard, 2022. "The intimacy trap: Navigating the commercial friendships of luxury," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 649-659.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:145:y:2022:i:c:p:649-659
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.02.075
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    References listed on IDEAS

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