The behavior of the Chinese customer in luxury purchase decisions. What drives him to buy abroad? The case of Chanel

Abstract

During the last few years the Chinese luxury market has expanded rapidly and continues to growth. It is already known that Chinese shoppers have overtaken U.S. shoppers to become the world’s biggest buyers of luxury goods. It’s easy to see that Chinese people are more interested now, they want to be accepted by the community and they think the only way is to wear very expensive European luxury brand. My essay will be based on the Chinese luxury market and Chinese people luxury consumer behavior. I’d like to divide my essay in two different part based on two different point of view. The Chinese perspective and the European one. First of all I think is necessary to explain the meaning of the luxury and then I will go through the general idea explaining how much important is the “made in”, so how much the brand nationality influence their decision and why Chinese people are not loyal to any brand. Then I’ll focus more on the solution the population have adopted like the grey market and the black market. In China, in fact, the prices of the imported goods are higher than the original prices and this is because the taxes imposed by the government are really high. The grey market is seen as a solution. Chinese people go to Europe and make a better deal than buy the product in loco. The last part I will focus on is the famous French brand Chanel. Since the opening in Beijing in 1998 the luxury brand had attracted lot of consumers. Important is the strategy adopted for the opening of the shop in Shanghai and then it’s so interesting the one adopted in 2015, the normalization of the prices. This strategy influenced the Chinese market but also the European one. So it’s important to know what the entire world thinks about this change. In the Western world the price increased a lot (like one thousand more than the original price). This was a great change for both markets so I want to know the different reaction and how Chanel explains all of this.