Stories Of Oriental Luxury Malls
Most experts believe that Asian consumers, especially those of luxury products are very complex and difficult to understand and plan a common marketing strategy for the region. On the one hand, there are flashy Chinese, matured Japanese, subtle Singaporeans, showy Hong Kong and put all these together you get Indian consumers. What these graduates from elite B-Schools know though is that these countries have an ever growing population of nouveau rich who wants to spend their money on luxury objects and costly lifestyle products. It is the motivation of buying these products that perplexes the experts.
While the rich in mainland China are still into conspicuous buying habit, in markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, buyers have gone from merely throwing money at the most expensive thing to becoming more discerning. The Chinese, on the other hand just need to buy something that is seen expensive by others. According to market survey, China can boost Asia’s share of world luxury market up to 60 percent.
We can take the example of the luxury watch market to illustrate this fact. Half of Switzerland’s $8 billion annual export comes to Asia and in the last 15 years Singapore has become the most significant Horology market in the world. If there are five exclusive pieces, at least two will be sold in Singapore and one in Hong Kong and this is serious money where a piece costs around $1.5 million.
In India, the rule is different. Here, two classes of rich are there – the traditional industrialists and businessmen on one hand, and the IT driven nouveau rich group. Most Indians though are still after branded products except the traditional users. Market experts believe that Indian luxury products industry will cross $1.25 billion mark by 2010.
So, every other company is vying to open shop in India and China along with growing markets of Vietnam and Indonesia. In fact, some luxury brands are into China’s second-tier cities. Armani have already set-up their manufacturing base in China. Armani’s rugs are woven in Tibet and T-shirts made in China. But fashion houses should remember that Asian consumers are choosy about the made-in- tag. They think it to be more glamorous if they own a suit made inItaly rather than China.
