Luxury Customers Getting Younger

The main customers of luxury brands are getting younger, with shoppers in their 20s and 30s outnumbering those in their 40s and 50s at high-end department stores like Lotte’s Avenuel and Galleria. The industry targets them as “young luxury customers,” but there are fears that that will aggravate an unhealthy consumption habit since few of them are economically independent.

People in their 20s and 30s accounted for 48 percent of customers who bought luxury goods at Avenuel in July, 10 percentage points more than those in their 40s and 50s. The proportion of 20-somethings has been going up by a percentage point a month from 12.3 percent in April to 16.9 percent in July. The same goes for Galleria Department Store with its longer history of selling luxury goods. People in their 20s and 30s constituted 57.1 percent of the store’s luxury customers in July.

Ha Seong-dong of Lotte Department Store says the young, unlike their parents, have grown up surrounded by luxury goods, and to them designer brands are simply a means to express themselves rather than an unnecessary indulgence.

Department stores are competing to woo these young customers. Galleria says it is displaying more trendy goods and increasing the number of multi-shops. It is also strengthening marketing strategies for young luxury customers such as events for soon-to-be-married couples. It has also become a home to high-end restaurants and cultural spaces to fit the taste of the new customers.

Yet many of them do not earn the money they spend on luxury goods. Students or jobless people account for over 10 percent of 20-something customers of luxury departments.

from chosun