The way consumers in China are shopping for luxury goods is changing amid the pandemic, with more purchases happening locally because of shelter-in-place protocols and travel restrictions.

Luxury spending in China accounts for a third of global spending. China’s growing wealth, style-conscious millennials, and policies and regulations designed to boost spending within the border pushed luxury spending higher in 2017. This report looks at where China’s consumers seek out information on luxury brands and what shopping channels they use.

Luxury is fundamental to Chinese consumers' aspirations

Amazon and Alibaba continue to expand into Western Europe—Amazon with hopes of capturing a greater European consumer base, and Alibaba selling luxury European goods to its tens of millions of consumers in China.

About one in five affluent consumers in the US make no use of any technology while in stores. That’s right: no price checks on a smartphone while shopping, no taking pictures of products and certainly no mobile payments.

Consumers in China spent $118.39 billion on luxury goods in 2017, far more than consumers in the US, Europe, Japan or the rest of the world.

Luxury brands soon followed suit—a move hastened by the near-total absence of tourists from China, who make a huge contribution to France’s luxury brands in normal times. Our revised estimates assume a minimal impact on ad spend in France in Q1, since the steep escalation in infections and lockdown only came in mid-March.

Influencer marketing operates differently in China than in other markets, mainly due to its unique social platforms. For one, influencers are known as key opinion leaders (KOLs), and an ecosystem of incubators and handlers can help turn an ordinary person into a KOL.

Luxury brands soon followed, spurred in large part by the sudden cut-off of tourism from China and other Asia-Pacific countries. Consumers in Asia are among the keenest buyers of France’s luxury brands.

Between H1 2019 and H1 2020, ownership of desktops, laptops, and/or tablets declined most sharply in developing markets, including Brazil, China, Egypt, and India—all countries where the focus has long been on mobile devices and services. But the same trend appeared to a lesser degree in several other countries too, including France, Russia, Sweden, and the US.

The first is a short survey offered via mobile; it contains a key set of 50 questions and reaches mobile-only respondents (who tend to be younger, less affluent, and concentrated in emerging markets).