Even though tourism plays a massive role in the Swiss market, 70 to 80 percent of the profit is generated by local customers. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, Switzerland was able to highly benefit from Chinese Outbound Tourism due to its absolute numbers of foreigners arriving and their daily spending power. Due to the closure of non-essential businesses, travel restrictions and a change in consumer buying behaviour and patterns of consumption of luxury items, new tactics must be implemented and adapted to reach and engage with new local consumers.

To collect data, a mixed method was adopted. Quantitative data was collected by administering questionnaires whereas qualitative data was obtained through semi-structured interviews. Surveys and questionnaires were sent out to students, family members, relatives and observed potential customers. Initially, a target of 150 participants for the survey and 10 individuals for the interviews was targeted. However, only 29 participants provided the research data. All participants are Swiss citizen.

Most of the participants were aged between 19 and 30. Therefore, strategies and tactics has been developed for that specific niche. From the interview results, participants had emphasized on the need to increase advertising, provide additional accessories and use of digital marketing in order to enhance the shopping experiences in retail. The company will need social media and social marketing strategies, particularly to interact with the digital native and technologically literate younger generations. The use of augmented reality enables watch lovers to project time pieces on their wrists. Moreover, virtual reality show rooms allow buyers were able to browse merchandise by relying on virtual assistants. As such, introducing technology features would lead to improved store experiences. A key finding revealed was that the pandemic influenced consumers of the luxury products to be more economically prudent due to the tough economic conditions imposed by the pandemic. However, some customers would continue with careless spending. The insights also showed that most companies would benefit from adopting digital channels to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.