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Kubes.SG
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« Reply #7 on: 10 November 2009, 7:39:09 am » |
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That is a very romantic and idyllic view. But it is just not true. As a rule consumers in Asia are much more obsessed with displaying their "wealth" than is generally the case in the developed world.
I have lived and worked a number of decades in Asia and I know how important face and status symbols are, and keeping up with the peers. Mrs Kubes and I lived in Japan for many years and we really got exposed to this obsession of displaying wealth while there. It is exactly the same here. The big awakening for me as to how obsessive people can get is an interesting story. One of Mrs Kubes' business associates went to Paris for business, and his daughter asked him for a Louis Vuitton bag. When he presented it to her she rejected it as it was not the tan coloured style covered in the LV logos, but black leather with a single small LV logo embossed on the bottom corner. Very under-stated. The daughter was devastated, the father was disappointed, and Mrs Kubes was the winner, as her associate decided to give it to her instead. We checked and it was valued just over US$3,000.
If "was is" is proudly driving around SG in a Hyundai Matrix that is because owning a car is a big deal and status symbol amongst his peers.
If you don't believe me about this obession in Asia and Singapore about new money displaying its wealth and the importance of status symbols, take 5 mins to read this....
Why brand obsession is the new status quo
The Cult of the Luxury Brand by Radha Chadha and Paul Husband
Reviewed by Kelly Nuxoll
Thirty years ago, Chinese businessmen were wearing Mao suits. Now their suits are Armani. Ferragamo shoes are de rigueur for South Korean women. Ninety-four percent of Tokyo women in their 20s own a Louis Vuitton. Of the US$80 billion luxury-brand industry, more than half of sales come from Asian consumers - despite the fact that purchases are often out of proportion to buyers' actual incomes.
In a surprisingly compelling read, Radha Chadha and Paul Husband, a marketing expert and retail-development consultant respectively, offer a sociological interpretation of Asians' mania for luxury brands: with old social hierarchies collapsing, luxury brands indicate one's place in the new pecking order.
Chadha and Husband are primarily interested in the phenomenon, so they can tell readers and, presumably, future clients how to take advantage of it. The book opens with an investigation into why luxury brands became so popular in Japan, Hong Kong, mainland China, South Korea, India and Southeast Asia. The bulk is devoted to case studies of each country, teasing out drivers among different markets. (Japanese are compelled to fit in, for instance, whereas South Koreans are socially competitive.)
The final section looks at how companies can cultivate consumers in Asia, inspiring what Chadha and Husband call a "luxeplosion". The authors' own fascination with their subject transforms what might have been a marketing manual into a nuanced sociological portrait of Asia in its first flush of economic power.
At the center of the desire for luxury is the question of identity: by donning high-end Western clothes, Asian consumers are literally trying on the costume of power. On the one hand, these trappings point to the thrill of having arrived; on the other, they suggest a crisis of confidence. Many women turn to Western designer clothes in part because they don't know how to dress otherwise, the authors observe.
Not long out of the sari or the cheongsam, women buy entire outfits copied straight from a magazine, including bags and shoes, and store them in their closets as ensembles so they don't forget what goes together.
Clever marketing can capitalize on the blank slate offered by many Asian countries - especially mainland China, which spent much of the 20th century cut off from the rest of the world. "Play god and create your own epidemic," Radha and Husband encourage. Among other techniques, they suggest hiring people with prominent social networks to invite their friends to luxury goods parties, recruiting celebrities to wear the brand, and wooing journalists to write favorably about their products.
In effect, the task is one of education - good marketers must first introduce consumers to why their products are valuable, and then create a curriculum of desire. When luxury goods have moved from exclusivity to must-haves to a way of life, then marketing has triumphed and the cult has reached is apotheosis.
It would be unfair to suggest that marketing is the only reason for luxury goods' success in Asia (although it has done a damn fine job). As Radha and Husband describe it, luxury goods are simply meeting a desire that is already there. Especially in countries that emphasize "face" and bringing honor to the family, easy-to-recognize designer labels are a welcome opportunity to flaunt wealth.
In addition, most Asian countries practice "gifting", and luxury goods of obvious high value flatter both the giver and the receiver. They are particularly popular where governments are trying to crack down on corruption, as a watch or wallet is discreet and can be bought in cash. And because they are so often part of political and business transactions, luxury goods are as popular with men as with women.
It would seem that everyone - from bored housewives, to pampered mistresses, to office ladies celebrating their independence, to high-schoolers keeping up with trends, to young executives seeking to impress, to captains of industry enjoying the view from the top - has reason to purchase luxury goods, leading Chadha and Husband to extol the "democratization" of luxe.
Yet in their exuberance, the authors fail to consider seriously the destructive side-effects of an addiction to high-end Western brands. While they acknowledge many middle-class Asians have not developed a savings habit, max their credit cards (and, in some cases, commit suicide over the debt), live with their parents into adulthood rather than forgo a disposable income, scrimp on food and necessities to afford luxuries, get plastic surgery even at young ages to keep up with an idealized image of beauty, and engage in freelance prostitution to pay for the season's new bag, Chadha and Husband dismiss objections to the cult of luxury as moralizing.
They are particularly disdainful of South Korea's failed campaign to discourage consumption of Western luxury goods on the grounds that it is anti-nationalistic, putting Koreans' hard-earned cash right back into the coffers of foreign businesses.
"Should luxury brands be discouraged?" they write. "South Korea's experience points to an emphatic no. You can't stop human nature. New money will always display its wealth."
Chadha and Husband reserve their ire for the multimillion-dollar industry of counterfeit luxury goods. This shadow market - itself a testament to human nature and an entrepreneurial spirit - is propelled by the same motivations as the real luxury-goods market, with wares at sometimes one-hundredth the price. "People don't see buying a counterfeit products as something illegal," the authors report incredulously, lamenting the counterfeit industry's lack of ethics - after all, it's marketing that has done all the heavy lifting.
Yet even "genuine fakes", identical in quality to the originals, cannot stop the juggernaut of the luxury-goods industry. As Radhi and Husband are happy to report, eventually consumers will abandon the market stalls and enter the flagships to purchase the real things. When all is said and done, the experience of the stores themselves may be the real key to the luxury industry's success.
After years of doing without, Asian shoppers are finding that the only thing that feels nicer than a made-to-order cashmere suit is entering a citadel of Western culture, flashing one's Fendi wallet, and being waited on by an attractive, deferential clerk.
The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia's Love Affair with Luxury by Radha Chadha and Paul Husband. Nicholas Brealey International: London, Boston (November 2006). ISBN-10:1904838057. Price US$35, 320 pages. issue
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