Conspicuous consumption of luxuries on the rise

A girl who prefers online shopping ran to her desk, screaming with delight

    when she saw the package containing her new dress had arrived.

    The 26 year-old girl spent 80 yuan ($12.50) on a fake white dress from the Internet that a character wore in the Gossip Girl series.

    According to the China Market Research Group, nearly five million Chinese people watch each new episode of Gossip Girl on the Internet, because the show isn’t broadcast on the country’s TV network, and increasing numbers of young Chinese girls want to imitate TV stars by buying the expensive brands they publicize in their shows.

    In fact many products showed in the program can not be bought on any real shops in the mainland, so some fans will go on the internet to find out what they are interested in.

    A survey on a luxurious bags says more than 50 percent of our customers are

    young girls who don’t earn much but they want to spend a month’s salary on a designer bag

    According to a report published by World Luxury Association this year, total consumption in the Chinese mainland luxury market reached $10.7 billion in 2010, excluding private jets, yachts or luxury cars, making the country the world’s second largest consumer of luxury goods following Japan.

    Some people may choose fake products with are similar to brand luxurious

    Products, which can be found out on some online shops easily and they are in

    different quality and tagged at lower prices.

    IBUonline is a B2B foreign trade platform, which has figured out the above mentioned trend.

    If you have interest in e-business foreign trade, please go to IBUonline

    homepage for more details.

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Conspicuous consumption increases in mainland China

    People sometimes lose their sense of reason when they pursue a material life. Conspicuous consumption during a period of social transition is an inevitable process of social development.

    Andy Kline, an international researcher for the World Luxury Association, said that because of yuan appreciation and the depreciation of the euro, the purchasing power of Chinese consumers in the international market has increased.

    In 2010, Asian people bought $69 billion luxury products from the European market, of which $50 billion was contributed by Chinese customers.

    The World Luxury Association says China’s appetite for luxuries is growing faster than that of any other country.

    China will become the largest luxury goods market and its sales volume will reach $14.6 billion in the next four or five years.

    Research from Bain Capital, one of the world’s leading business strategy consultancy firms, showed that in 2010 sales of luxury goods increased

    substantially year-on-year by 30 percent in China, while sales declined in Japan and the United States, the world’s other top luxury goods markets.

    A large number of Chinese consumers are still in a stage of conspicuous consumption.

    As China has achieved new heights in its economy and its society recently entered an era of mass consumption, the purchasing power of Chinese citizens is rising along with the development of the commodity economy.

    IBUonline is a B2B foreign trade e-business platform, but it also cares about

    luxurious goods markets.

    If you have interest in e-business foreign trade, please go to IBUonline

    homepage for more details.

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    Economic outlook 2012, uptrend or downward?

    Some experts say 2012 is the year of rational pessimism.

    While there has been much concern about the United States’ political gridlock, something worse for the US, and for the world, could have happened: the Republicans could have prevailed in their program of austerity-cum-redistribution to the wealthy.

    Automatic cuts won’t happen until 2013, which means that the economy in 2012 will be spared, ever so slightly.

    European leaders repeatedly proclaim their commitment to saving the euro, but those who could have repeatedly said that they are committed to not doing what is needed. They have recognized that austerity will mean slower growth — indeed, a

    recession is increasingly likely — and that, without growth, the eurozone’s

    distressed countries will not be able to manage their debts. But they have done nothing to promote growth. They are on a death spiral.

    The only thing saving the euro in the short term is the European Central Bank (ECB)’s purchases of sovereign bonds, which have kept interest rates from soaring. Like it or not, the ECB is effectively financing the sovereigns. German leaders have frowned on this, and the ECB has felt uncomfortable, limiting its purchases and saying that political leaders, not central bankers, should save the euro.

    IBUonline is a B2B foreign trade platform and it also keeps an eye on global economic outlook in 2012.

    If have interest in foreign trade or e-business, you can go to IBUonline homepage for more details.

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2012 economy, more turmoil; reviewing the past

The most likely scenario is more about austerity, weaker economies, more

    unemployment and continuing deficits, with European leaders doing the minimum to fend off crisis for the moment.

    When the euro breaks up or Europe takes the kind of definitive action that would make a single currency work — may come in 2012, but, more likely than not,

    Europe’s leaders will do whatever they can to postpone that day of reckoning. Europe does suffer, and so does the rest of the world.

    The US had hoped for an export-led recovery, but, with economic growth slowing in Europe. And, with the worst effects of spending cuts potentially still to come, gridlock — and Republican spite — it may mean that the Barack Obama

    administration’s payroll-tax cut will not be extended, weakening household

    consumption.

    That, combined with cutbacks at the state and local level, means that the first real manifestations of austerity’s impact will appear in 2012.

    No one in either US political party seems willing to face the fact that fixing the banking system, which was not sufficient to restore the economy to health.

    The US economy before the crisis was being maintained on artificial life support by a housing bubble that led to unsustainable consumption. There is no way back

    to 2007.

    IBUonline is keeping an eye on global economic outlook in 2012.

    IBUonline is a B2B foreign trade platform, which may help SMEs and international buyers to develop foreign trade.

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