Consumption of luxury goods (clothing, accessories, jewelry, watches) in 2014 in Russia will be reduced by 18%, in China - by 2%. This is reported by the Wall Street Journal with reference to a recent study by Bain & Co.
In general, according to Bain & Co, global sales in the luxury sector for the year will show an increase of 2% - to 223 billion euros ($ 282.6 billion). This is significantly below the usual annual growth observed until 2011.
Vedomosti notes that this is the strongest fall, even in comparison with the crisis year 2009, when the indicator fell by 5%. At the beginning of the year, analysts believed that Russians would buy luxury goods only 4-6% less than usual.
"Bain & Company expects that Russian wholesale buyers of luxury goods will reduce their budgets for the spring-summer 2015 season by 30% due to falling sales and the ongoing devaluation of the ruble," the newspaper writes.
The expected decline in 18% of sales in Russia, according to experts from Bain, is due to the difficult situation in Ukraine, and the decline in China - austerity policy conducted by the government and recently tightened even more. In recent years, European producers of goods from the upper price segment have mostly benefited from foreign buyers, while the number of Europeans buying high-priced goods has been declining.
Russian and Chinese tourists were usually leading in terms of the amount spent for the purchase of luxury brand products. However, according to the company Global Blue, which analyzes the spending of foreign tourists, the volume of purchases of foreigners in Europe until September did not show growth year on year.
And in a number of countries, for example, in Great Britain and Germany, this indicator decreased because of a sharp reduction in the number of tourists from Russia. For the first nine months, compared with the same period last year, the Russians spent 23% less money in the kingdom, and in the republic - 11%.
A little better things are in Italy and France. In France, purchases of Russian tourists declined by 6%, which offset the steady increase in purchases made by tourists from mainland China and Hong Kong. In Italy, there was an increase in the number of buyers from China and Korea. More than 70% of all foreign purchases fall to Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Global Blue reported.
Experts of the company believe that spending of Russians in Europe will continue to decline in the next year. According to the forecast, the drop could reach 5%. At the same time, Chinese citizens can spend 10% more than this year.