Luxury consumers & luxury brand management in China
Résumé
This Chapter investigates Chinese consumer perception and motives regarding luxury consumption. The authors propose to segment the Chinese luxury market by relating traditional cultural values to brand preference for both Western brands and Chinese brands. The implications of the results are linked to an analysis of selected Chinese luxury brands in order to explore the possible avenues that could lead Chinese luxury brands to success in both the home market and potential global markets.
Luxury consumption in emerging markets is strongly influenced by western consumer culture, however few studies have investigated the psychology and behavior of these consumers. China is one of the most important emerging luxury markets, in this study, we aim to investigate Chinese consumers’ motives and behaviors regarding luxury consumption by projecting them into a context of global consumer culture. We firstly validated a scale of luxury value perceptions in China and the U.S. to better capture Chinese consumers’ luxury consumption motivations. A segmentation of the Chinese luxury consumers is then carried out, characterizing different consumption tendency. Secondly, to elicit the influence of western culture on Chinese consumers’ luxury consumption, we compared the preferred luxury brands of acculturated sample (Chinese living in the U.S.) to those preferred by the mainland Chinese sample. Implications from these results are linked to an analysis of selected Chinese luxury brands, to explore the possible avenues that may lead Chinese luxury brands to success.