Luxury Brands and Social Media in China: New Trends and Development
This paper offers insights into the use of social network sites and e-commerce platforms to engage consumers against the background of increasing consumption of luxury brands by young consumers in China. The data were obtained from personal interviews wit
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Luxury Brands and Social Media in China: New Trends and Development Mark Ng
Abstract This paper offers insights into the use of social network sites and e-commerce platforms to engage consumers against the background of increasing consumption of luxury brands by young consumers in China. The data were obtained from personal interviews with 20 respondents between 20 and 30 years of age who were recruited via a snowball method in Hong Kong. Young Chinese consumers have varied reasons and patterns for luxury consumption. The key motivations and behavior patterns toward the use of social media and e-commerce platform in their luxury purchase are also examined. Companies must consider the differences that exist within this generation to effectively approach this market. The findings show that young consumers in China tend to heavily rely on information from online social networks and e-commerce platform in the pre-purchase and purchase processes. Social networks and e-commerce platforms also facilitated the cross-border luxury buying behaviors of Chinese consumers. Luxury retailers are required to rethink the roles of physical shops and develop better integration of online and offline activities to meet the changes of Chinese consumers. The motivations of buying luxury brands as well as their use of social media in connection with luxury brands are investigated. This study thus contributes to the research of the marketing of the luxury goods market in China. Keywords Social media marketing
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China E-commerce Young consumers Luxury
Introduction
In recent years the global sales of personal luxury goods have experienced significant growth, from being valued at about US$90 billion in 1994, and then tripling to more than US$280 billion in 2014 (D’Arpizio et al. 2014). The rapidly growing M. Ng (&) Department of Business Administration, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Wai Tsui Crescent, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 T.-M. Choi and B. Shen (eds.), Luxury Fashion Retail Management, Springer Series in Fashion Business, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2976-9_10
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affluent Asian consumers have developed a strong appetite for Western-branded luxury goods and have the fastest global consumption growth (Li and Su 2007; Tay 2008). The strong growth of Chinese economy makes it the greatest contributor to the bright performance of luxury goods worldwide. Luxury consumption in China reached US$37 billion in 2012, making it the world’s second largest luxury goods market that year (Anonymous 2013). Western luxury brands, such as Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Burberry, Prada and Giorgio Armani, have penetrated China’s retail market (Unger 2006). Despite the slowdown of economic growth in 2014, the spending levels of luxury shoppers have increased significantly by 28 %. It is predicted that luxury consumption in China will climb to 44 % of global market share by 2020 (De Lange 2015). Traditionally, research studies of luxury consumption have mainly been undertaken in Europe and
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