According to a study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released on Tuesday, in 2015 Chinese people will represent the largest market for luxury goods and services in the world, the figure includes the money they spend at home or when traveling abroad.
“We predict that by 2020, more than 330 cities in China will have the same level of disposable income as Shanghai in 2010, and by 2015, China will become the largest luxury market in the world,” says BCG.
Last year, the broker CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, predicted that by 2020 China would be the largest market in the world for the luxury products, but the audit firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) estimated that this will happen in 2015.
“There are two segmentations of China, the interior market of China and Chinese travelers. The second consumes as much as the first, if not more,” said Olivier Abtan, associate director at BCG in Paris. “The leaders of some of the luxury giant believe that 40% of their sales worldwide are already secured by Chinese consumers,” the study said. “What is surprising is the emerging power of consumers through their travels. They are the ones that generate sales around the world. This is an important phenomenon and it is not gonna stop.”
According to BCG, half of all luxury spending by Brazilians and Chinese are made abroad when traveling. And these will increase tourist flows and boost the market, says BCG.
But these flows do not explain everything: the world map of luxury is changing very rapidly, China and some other emerging countries like Brazil are gaining an important place. In addition to China, “large cities in other countries of BRIC are also becoming powerful platforms of luxury industry,” notes the study.