Why Chinese Prefer Purchasing Luxury Goods, Especially Dresses, as Compared to British People and What Is the Role of Chinese’s Love for Luxury in Promoting the Development of Luxury Goods Industry

This expansion demonstrates how the luxury industry is now run by massive corporations whose focus is only on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and most importantly, PROFITS! With growth and expansion, has come a decrease in quality and rarity. The luxury garments produced are mostly not handmade but are even outsourced to large factories in places such as China and Turkey. Also, to meet quarterly turnover projections, “designers churn(ed) out increasingly trendy collections of clothes, handbags, and shoes.” (Thomas, Pg. 246) With hundreds of new stores around the globe the surplus of designer labeled merchandise is immense hence, the proliferation of outlet malls.

The consumption of luxury goods in China is mounting sharply. Not only those born to elite families, but also many common people are greedy for luxury brands (China, a Booming

The luxury market is growing fast in China and India due to the rapidly increasing wealth levels and standard of living gains. Coach must keep in mind the different cultural backgrounds of each country and take that into account when designing and marketing new products and lines.

The author who inspired the topic of this thesis is Dana Thomas. As a fashion writer, Dana Thomas, has analyzed the changes in luxury fashion business. Thomas has been writing about fashion for the past twenty-five years in various journals such as Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Financial Times, and more. Dana Thomas’ two books, Deluxe and Gods and Kings, are the inspiration for this thesis. Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre goes into great detail the secrets of the leading luxury industry brands, namely Prada, Gucci and Burberry, to showcase the “New Luxury” of today and how “luxury lost its luster” by featuring the manufacturing and logistical processes. Thomas exposes that many luxury brands use the same Asian factories that mass-market retailers employ, which raises questions concerning quality and craftsmanship for luxury brands.

Luxury fashion items can be acquired via several different avenues, as well as at several different price points in today’s market. Previously, the only options consumers had for the acquisition of luxury fashion goods was to purchase directly from the retail store; however, now there are an enormous amount of resources for consumers to opt for a used product at a much lower price by shopping on websites like eBay, or by purchasing from the growing amount of high-end consignment stores. Another option that luxury fashion consumers can easily utilize is to buy the item new and at a cheaper price by shopping at outlet stores or discount department stores like Nordstrom Rack and T.J. Maxx. Finally, these consumers have the option to borrow. Websites like BagBorrowOrSteal.com have created hugely profitable businesses by making the latest luxury accessory available to be rented at a cost that is a fraction of what the item would cost if purchased new from the retailer. These options have granted a much larger array of people the opportunity to experience aspects of the luxury lifestyle and the luxury image than ever before.

An increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world experiences a rapid cross-border movement of goods, service, technology and capital. Luxury goods industry, serve as one of the most competitive industry, emerging and developing rapidly all the time. To a great extent, globalization promotes the development of luxury goods industry significantly in spite of the big shock hit by several times of economic crisis.

Why do Chinese people like luxury goods so much? There are two sides to explain, the first side is customer, and another side is luxury brands marketing strategy. For customer side, Chinese people purchase power is increasing year by year. China implemented the reform and opening policy at 1978, this policy accelerated China’s urbanization and industrialization, and then promoted China economic upward flourish; and because of the reform and opening policy, which provided more opportunity to luxury brands to get into China’s market, so Chinese people was given a chance to touch with luxury goods. Secondly, Chinese middle class or rich people regard owning luxury goods as a symbol of social status and wealth. Thirdly, Chinese people have

During the period of globalization (the 1990s) the role of luxury as the historical phenomenon has changed: from the cultural factor it turns into the industrial factor, the factor of production that brings added value. Luxury moves the long way from a reserved craftsmanship available only for the elite to the luxury industry. In the luxury industry, the capitalization of the following sociocultural phenomena takes place: values, social norms and

This behavior brings competitive advantages to the European luxury brands. Moreover, customers in different countries have different purchase behaviors. For instance, some countries’ customers are willing to move away from common recognized brand, because they want to purchase more exclusive products. Furthermore, because of the increasing speed of globalization, people are more likely willing to travel between different countries. These travelers will buy luxury good during their trips. In fact, Chinese tourists contributed over one third of sales in Europe. The luxury goods industry should notice to adjust the actual demand between local people and tourists in Europe

The overall sales of luxury goods in the year 2009 is expected to be more than US$150 billion and Asia contributes 10% to it. The concept of luxury is now not confined to only to Europe and US, the Asian subcontinent contributes majorly to it, with India and China as the newly emerging markets. Professor James Twitchell (2002) comments on the democratization of luxury and the changing consumer psychology These new customers for luxury are younger than clients of the old luxe used to be, they are far more numerous, they make their money far sooner, and they are far more flexible in financing and fickle in choice. They do not

The paper concentrates on three primary factors to argue how the existence of prestigious luxury counterfeits elevates consumer’s willingness to purchase the real luxury brands. It first focuses on the argument that by taking advantage of Chinese “face” culture, luxury counterfeit improves consumer’s willingness to purchase original luxuries by

The last problem we highlighted concerns how to increase the number of customers in the mainland China market . First, we believe that the most relevant issue is a survey amongst customers on the Shanghai Tang brand perception and the 5 luxury brands in their top-of-mind, in order to analyze the competitors that the company has to face in the future.

What are the key tensions and challenges at Shanghai Tang? How did they come about?

Luxury product sales boost in the emerging marketing like China, which has extraordinary growth and strong potential consumers for the development of luxury goods in the China market. With gradually lower and lower increase of revenue in the European countries, Louis Vuitton (abridged as LV in the following sections) commits itself to set up more stores in China. However, LV is faced with the problems of declining profits in China, which urges it to adjust its entry strategy into the China market. In this case, this report will focus on distinguishing the factors that influence LV’s development in China and

Before considering the behavior of consumers when purchasing luxury brands and defined the three headings, it is important to examine a definition of what luxury brand marketing and what luxury brands. Nowadays, the luxury brand marketing is a controversial topic and so many writers discussion in the literature. According to Nueoo and Quelch define luxury brands as, “those whose ratio of functional utility to price is low while the ratio of intangible and situational utility to price is