Luxury brands aren’t good enough anymore
With China’s consumers changing taste, many large luxury-good companies like Louis Vuitton and Burberry are experiencing slower sales growth.
With this many people lining up, no wonder why people want to be different.
Jeremy Liang mentioned in his post about China’s consumers abandoning LV because it was easily forged. I think that a change in consumer taste is a bigger factor. I agree that people are trying harder to not be ordinary, like the shift away from the iPhone because it was becoming too common. China’s luxury consumers are becoming pickier, buying the best-quality products to discriminate themselves from the crowd. Quality of the products is becoming more important than the brand name (bad news for LV and Burberry). For Chinese consumers, the “ultrahigh-end” of the market is a way for people to be different from the rest. In my opinion, this cultural shift is good for consumers, because they are starting to realize the value of quality over just a brand name.
Image: http://daxueconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/daxueconsulting-Louis-Vuitton-in-China2.jpg