Chinese patrons to remain luxury markets key growth factor

05 May '14

4 min read

However, moving on to the most mentioned brands: when asked about the brands that came to mind for luxury goods, the first response among Shanghai residents was Louis Vuitton, followed by Chanel and Gucci.

New Yorkers’ top 3 includes: Gucci as the most spontaneously mentioned, followed by Coach and then Louis Vuitton in third place. In general, New Yorkers show a more sophisticated knowledge and a greater awareness of premium brands.

The report also confirms a number of known facts: the Chinese prefer to buy their luxury products abroad, and the Shanghainese are no exception. Prices are higher in China and this penalizes their spending (fig. 3). In fact, only 30% of Chinese, less than half the number of New Yorkers (79%), said they had never made a fashion purchase abroad.

Furthermore, the Chinese and Americans confirm that they are a digitally-friendly audience: both in Shanghai and in New York, at least 20% of consumers shop at specialist mono-brand or multi-brand e-stores. A third of consumers interviewed in Shanghai are cross-channel shoppers, i.e. they shop both online and offline. This has led to another idea regarding the importance of merchants operating an omni-channel business.

There are also strong similarities between Shanghai and NYC in their choices of sources of information before making a purchase: at the top of the list for residents of both cities, we find web browsing (the official brand website remains the preferred source for c. 80% of consumers), then any communications sent via email by brands and the point of sale which is used as a reference point to pick up information on a product or service.

In particular, one consumer in three in both NYC (35%) and Shanghai (31%) say that they have found information from communications sent by brands via email. It should also be noted that about a half of people who went to a boutique to purchase luxury goods received and opened a digital direct marketing message sent by the brand or a retailer: therefore the email channel has a decisive impact on purchases in store and not just those online.

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