The new luxury: not what you buy, but where

The luxury industry is buoyant. In fact it is worth a staggering 225 billion euros, triple the size of what it was twenty years ago. In the year to 2014 it grew 7 percent, a sustainable growth, considering the previous demand from China and markets with expanding populations enjoying healthy disposable incomes.

But luxury is no longer about buying expensive clothes and accessories at home. The core of luxury, especially personal luxury, is that spending is done by a new global citizen. Someone who may live in London, but shops in Tokyo, buys online from California, and visits the Balearic Islands during the season.

The luxury shopper is a tourist

The luxury-goods industry in most markets is now driven by touristic spending, which means that who the buyers are matters more than where they buy.

There are exceptions, however. Japanese citizens make most of their luxury purchases at home, primarily owing to currency factors. (The value of the yen has declined nearly 30 percent since 2012.)

But Chinese consumers now represent the top and fastest-growing nationality for luxury, spending abroad more than three times what they spend locally. Tourists are also increasingly influencing the luxury market in the Americas. With such cross-pollination of luxury spending, it makes less and less sense to think only in terms of location.

Instead, the focus is shifting to consumers, with local trends and tastes representing only part of the picture. This new mind-set has important implications for luxury brands. It requires thinking about the product offerings from a more global perspective.

This means the concepts of seasonal and national product categories, which still define most brand's offerings, becoming obsolete. A more international consideration is therefore much more interesting. You never know where the shopper may be returning to.

image: Shopping tourist