Luxury Retailing in China: --a Consumer-based Perspective for the Future Development of Luxury Companies in the Chinese Market

ShorttitleWith a booming macro economic environment, China is expected to have 250 million consumers who can afford luxury brands, according to the estimates by China's Association of Branding Strategy (Chadha & Husband, 2007: p140). In this dissertation, the background of China's luxury industry is briefly introduced in the first part, and also including current developments. In the second part, a discussion is made of the luxury consumers. Consequently, a census of those consumers is made mainly by their age. People live in different social backgrounds and have adopted significantly different buying attitudes. Thus the social and economic changes since the establishment of the People's Republic of China are introduced in the second part. In the third part, a conclusion has been made based on the discussions of the previous parts about who the current consumers are and who the future core market segments will be. Consequently a perspective of the future development of the industry is discussed in the third part.