Smaller cities shopping more on online luxury platforms

Future of retail lies in clicks, not bricks

These consumers prefer to buy affordable luxury products, particularly expensive garments, handbags, and accessories, not high fashion like haute couture, jewelry and watches.

These products are usually priced under 100,000 yuan ($16,700). In shangpin.com, the highest price tag in the bag catalog is 52,900 yuan - for a limited-edition LeBoy evening bag from French luxury house Chanel. On yoox.cn, the most expensive item is a medium-size black and gray fur bag from Dolce & Gabbana, with a price tag of 49,920 yuan.

Affordable luxury is the new lifestyle among consumers in the smaller cities, according to shangpin.com's Zhao. He finds many of these customers, unlike before, are getting more sophisticated. They are gradually abandoning products with big logos, but becoming more interested in the quality and styles they like.

Zhao Lin, e-commerce analyst with China Internet Network Information Center, says with the development of the Internet, consumers in smaller cities have more approaches to products from luxury houses.

However, they are not in the stage of consuming haute couture and jewelry because of their lifestyles. A typical example is a housewife in Changsha, Hunan province, who might be in desperate need of a luxury Alexander McQueen handbag to take to work, but she might not need an Alexander McQueen evening gown, because there are seldom occasions for her to dress up.

Another inevitable trend among these consumers is they are much more dependent on information from social networking services.

"And one special characteristic is the fact that people living in these cities use their online and digital resources to follow and stay up to date with their favorite fashion and luxury brands," fashionbi.com's Monarrez says.

Fashionbi tracks online shoppers' behavior and tracks more label key words that become extremely active in Sina Weibo during international fashion weeks.

Shangpin.com's Zhao concurs. He says many of the website's customers are "grouped" by WeChat, Weibo and QQ Zones.