Luxury Brands, Once Highly Cold, Are Now Seeking "Chinese Consumers".

This is a "chase game". Only this time, the role of "chaser" has changed.

"High-end", "quality", "limit"... All along, in the minds of most consumers, luxury is a "beyond expectation" existence. As a result, Chinese consumers pursuing high-end fashion once tried to buy overseas luxury brands.

The annual 618 has just passed. Every movie and television reporter noticed that this mass participation in shopping promotion can also see various kinds of luxury brands from time to time. For example, at the end of May, Tmall announced that 111 luxury brands such as Burberry and Valentino will take part in Tmall 618 this year. Jingdong also announced on the 7 th of this month that the three major brands of PRADA group, Prada, MiuMiu and Car Shoe, were officially settled in Jingdong 618. Even the "price butcher" spells a lot, and will slaughter the knife to Givenchy, directly killing the light luxury Givenchy to the lowest price of the whole network.

It is easy to see that, as Chinese consumers have been pursuing foreign luxury goods, luxury brands are beginning to do everything they can to get close to Chinese traffic. In this process, the localization of luxury goods in marketing strategy is becoming more and more obvious. In addition to cooperating with business tycoons, marketing strategies frequently appear in social media to cater to Chinese consumers' daily habits.

All these actions on the localization of the Chinese market, in the eyes of the industry, is a win-win result, and it is also a decision that luxury brands have to make. Yang Dayun, a fashion industry investor and excellent international brand Cci Capital Ltd CEO, said in an interview with each meijingyingshi reporter that from the previous inactive to the ongoing trial, it is a big change in the Chinese market for luxury brands. This is because the Chinese luxury consumer group is the youngest in the world and shopping habits are increasingly dependent on the online group. Therefore, if we want to get the favor of this group, luxury goods must cater to the tastes of young consumers. However, Yang Dayun also said that from the perspective of the characteristics of luxury goods, it is difficult to change the "emphasis on offline consumption". At present, a lot of actions taken by luxury online are for the offline market.

Chinese characteristics of luxury goods touches

Since China became the only area of luxury market share growth in the world in 2017, the international luxury sector has gradually entered "China time". The most obvious phenomenon of luxury brands in China is that once the "high cold" image has been changed, overseas luxury brands are frequently associated with the domestic e-commerce platform.

For example, as early as July 2015, Tmall UpForever, the first brand of the global luxury brand LVMH group, "landed" Tmall, and in the next two years, Guerlain, Fu Lei Shi, tiger Heuer, real time, MOET & CHANDON Hennessy and other important brands entered Tmall.

According to public information, as of now, there are more than 100 brands including Valentino, Versace, Burberry, Zegna, Marni, StellaMcCartney, Tod 's, MCM and Moschino in Tmall's luxury Channel LuxuryPavilion, covering heavy luxury to light luxury, across clothing, leather goods, beauty makeup and watches and so on. Since then, new brands have continued to enter.

Of course, Jingdong also launched luxury shopping platform TOPLIFE on the other side. Subsequently, Kai Yun group's French luxury brand SaintLaurent, the British luxury brand AlexanderMcQueen and other brands have announced the entry of TOPLIFE. Just now, the pace of Italy luxury group PRADA attacking the Chinese market is accelerating. Following its brand Prada and MiuMiu's entry into the luxury goods business platform Temple library, the group also announced that its three key brands Prada, Miu Miu and CarShoe entered Jingdong during the 618 period, and 2019 new products in autumn and winter were synchronized.

As we all know, the threshold of luxury electric business is very high. Compared with convenience and speed, luxury consumers are more interested in enjoying the full experience service that highlights their identity and wealth. This leads to the fact that even with the rapid development of online retailing, the attitude of luxury goods is still relatively cautious. This is also an important reason why luxury brands developed earlier in the electricity business abroad, but it seems that the pace of development is not rapid.

Now, however, the phenomenon that a large number of luxury goods have gathered in a few large third party e-commerce platforms in short time seems to be only appearing in China.

The reason why such a "Chinese characteristic" will appear is, on the one hand, that luxury brands take a fancy to China's huge market. According to Bain's previous research on China's luxury goods market in 2018, the overall sales of China's luxury goods market in 2018 continued to record a record growth in 2017, and the growth rate reached 20% in second consecutive years.

On the other hand, it is because the largest consumer traffic in China is the gathering of landlords in Tmall, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms. Bain's data also showed that in 2018 the Chinese bought the global 1/3 luxury goods, and 1/10 traded in Tmall.

"For luxury brands, it is the best way to expand online business through their own official website. But obviously this is not feasible in China. Because in the Chinese market, the shopping habits of young consumers are mainly based on online shopping platforms such as Tmall and Jingdong, and they are stationed in these platforms. The flow brought to the brand is unmatched by the brand official website. A veteran in the luxury sector said to every movie and TV reporter.

After several years of development, China has formed an Alibaba system composed of Tmall luxury Channel Luxury Pavilion, YNAP (YooxNet-a-Porter) and glamour benefits, and a new luxury online ecosystem represented by Jingdong, composed of Toplife, Farfetch and temple library.

What is interesting is that the brand seems to have a "collectivization" phenomenon on the choice of these platforms. For example, the brand of the group is mainly to cooperate with Tmall, and its brand is more from its entry into Jingdong to start its online business in China.

In view of this, the above senior personages believe that such a situation is mainly because the brand's choice for the choice of the electricity supplier platform is still the logic of the past pioneering line business: luxury goods have obvious leader effect in the channel business, for example, when Chanel is settled, LouisVuitton will be more willing to be neighbors. And this mentality will be more obvious in the brand of the same group.

"However, in my opinion, it is inevitable for the future brand to sell products through different online platforms, but at present there are differences in the choice of the first platform, which is more dependent on human factors." The veteran said.

In order to flow, do everything possible.

In today's luxury industry, there is a passage to say: when someone asks you whether you have gone to China, if you do not go, it means that your brand has no future.

There is no doubt that in the current European market is more pessimistic, and Japan and South Korea's market growth is weak, the Chinese market is increasingly important for luxury brands.

In the interpretation of the 2018 China Luxury Market Research Report, Bain, the global partner of BrunoLannes, also said that in the future, China's luxury market is expected to continue to maintain strong momentum under the sustained growth of the four growth engines of the millennial generation, consumer reflow, digital development and the rapid growth of the middle class.

In these growth engines, the most popular high-end consumer groups are brands. For the major luxury brands, the influence of the younger generation is more and more obvious. In 2018, the millennial generation and the Z generation contributed 100% to the growth of the global luxury market, further than in 2017 (85%).

"China's luxury consumer group is the youngest consumer group in the world, and it is also the fastest changing group." Yang Dayun said.

From the current situation, this generation of high-end high-end consumer groups, not only let the luxury more and more deeply participate in online shopping, but also change the luxury brand in other aspects, thus making the luxury goods more and more consistent with the tonal of the Chinese market.

I have to admit that social networking is playing a more and more important role in people's daily life. Especially for young consumers, the habit of eating, buying and entertaining is often achieved through social networking. This also allows luxury brands to find a brand friendly user community from the social platform. Therefore, we have seen more and more luxury brands enter the social ecology of WeChat, Xiao Hong Shu, jitter and so on in recent two years.

Of course, it is impossible to avoid KOL when it comes to social platforms. Public data show that 68% of luxury brands push messages less than 5000 times, luxury marketing has to rely on information flow advertising and KOL.

In order to get more ground, luxury stars have launched domestic stars as spokesmen in recent years. For example, BottegaVeneta invites thousands of seals to become its first Asia Pacific spokesperson, and Li Yuchun becomes the ambassador of Gucci Asia watches and jewelry.

Besides, in the aspect of commodity presentation, integrating Chinese elements into products can be said to be one of the strategies to attract Chinese consumers. For example, DolceGabbana launched the blue and white porcelain series in 2015. In the same way, the former Dior touches the red line of this life year, and the traditional Chinese cultural background of Dai Jin is quickly pursued by Chinese young girls after the launch of the Chinese Zodiac bracelet.

Burberry launched its first lunar New Year event in January this year.

"All actions are actually the embodiment of the digital transformation of luxury brands, and all these digital actions should be centered on the phenomenon of younger Chinese high-end consumers." The senior official said.

At the same time, the veteran also pointed out that the marketing strategy of these luxury brands in China is more frequent and varied because the brand has gradually realized that compared with the European market, the Chinese market is larger and the consumption habits of different regions are quite different. "This is actually a concrete manifestation of the localization of luxury brands in China's marketing strategy." The veteran said.

However, in Yang Dayun's view, the digitization of the luxury brand is actually a process of increasing its traffic volume, and is not a way to support the main performance of the brand, because the main source of revenue of the luxury goods will eventually return to the bottom line.