There are more and more Chinese people that can afford luxury goods. This is due to the fast growing upper middle-class. But these Chinese consumers of luxury goods don’t buy in China: in fact, 76% of the Chinese luxury consumers prefer to go abroad.
Luxury goods are bought during travels…
It took time but is finally accepted: Chinese shoppers like to buy their high-end products outside China. But this doesn’t mean that they buy less product: on the contrary we can see an increase in the purchase of these products. Chinese tourists are more every year, and they also are the upper middle class. It means that they can afford luxury goods and bought a lot of luxury goods during their travels in Europe, Hong Kong or USA, in holidays or business.
A report published by “Fortune Character Institute”, a Chinese group, said that 76% of the Chinese luxury consumers purchased out on China in 2014. Mainland Chinese spend 25 billion $ of goods in China, which represents an 11% decrease from 2013. However, they spent 81 billion $ abroad, a 9% increase in relation to 2013.
This can be a little exaggerated, these researches are not 100% reliable, but it’s widely accepted now that a lot of Chinese people don’t buy their luxury goods in China. This has bad impact on the market of luxury goods in China, because their goods aren’t bought. A low is estimated from 1% up to 11%.
This will increase as more people will without any doubt travel more or starting to travel in 2015.
…And also online
A lot of products are bought online on the big Chinese markets like Taobao or Tmall but also directly on the websites of the high-end brands. In fact, a lot of these brands understood the Chinese trend of buying products outside of China, and their love for shopping online. A lot of them decided to adapt their websites in Chinese and to provide an online shopping service with payment facilities. This can also allow Chinese people who want to buy products outside of China to avoid a travel, because if they like to travel, they can’t travel anytime they want a new product because of the short number of holidays they have. There are also people who don’t want to travel because they don’t like it or they don’t have the time for it: the online shopping is the best solution for them.
More news here
But Chinese consumers are still one of the biggest luxury goods consumers in the world, so even if they don’t buy a lot of things in China, they buy some and it can be sufficient. Surely they buy more products outside, approximatively 3 times more, but they buy products from imported brands in China. More brands desire to go in China because of the high spending of the Chinese consumes, so China will see more high-end brand on its streets and malls in the years to come.
To know more about implanting a brand in China click here.
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Interesting tweets
The best digital tools to Attract Chinese Tourists ! http://t.co/i7NqjlmeM4 pic.twitter.com/8UN8yrWhDv
— Marketing China (@marketing2china) 20 Décembre 2014
1 comment
alamtar Guo
It’s not surprising! Most of the time luxury goods can be detaxed thanks to duty-free in airports while going abroad. When you go in Paris, there is an endless queue to buy luxury goods in Louis Vuitton, Dior or Chanel stores… some Chinese consumers have a proper budget while traveling for luxury goods, it’s part of the plan, impressive.