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The Evolution of the Chinese Luxury Fashion Consumer: An Interpretive Study of Luxury Value Perceptions

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Understanding Luxury Fashion

Part of the book series: Palgrave Advances in Luxury ((PAAL))

Abstract

This chapter conceptualises luxury fashion as a cultural phenomenon by exploring the perspectives and lived experiences of contemporary consumers who determine China’s luxury market dynamics. It questions the predominant assumption that Chinese consumers are passive adopters of imported Western luxury consumption values and illustrates the complexity inherent in the Chinese consumer experience, highlighting their potential as proactive value creators. Chinese consumers characterise luxury fashion in financial, conspicuous, functional and hedonic terms (Shukla and Purani in Journal of Business Research 65:1417–1424, 2012; Shukla et al. in Marketing Letters 26:265–278, 2015), but also imbue it with a unique contextual value that reflects the socio-cultural realm of their worlds. They see luxury fashion as a ‘symbol of the West’ and the ‘art of life’ they should aspire to, but its growing accessibility has caused some disorientation and alienation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fashion Business & Technology, Department of Materials, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Patsy Perry & Tiantian Ye

  2. School of Fashion, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

    Liz Barnes

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  1. Patsy Perry
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  2. Liz Barnes
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  3. Tiantian Ye
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Correspondence to Patsy Perry .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lusíada University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Isabel Cantista

  2. ISEM Fashion Business School, Madrid, Spain

    Teresa Sádaba

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Perry, P., Barnes, L., Ye, T. (2020). The Evolution of the Chinese Luxury Fashion Consumer: An Interpretive Study of Luxury Value Perceptions. In: Cantista, I., Sádaba, T. (eds) Understanding Luxury Fashion. Palgrave Advances in Luxury. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25654-8_8

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