10 Countries That Spend the Most on Luxury Goods

You will get dizzy when you see the amounts spent by these 10 countries that spend the most on luxury goods. Although one could argue they could share some of that money to charities, who are we to judge. We live in a (mostly) free world and one of its perks is the freedom to spend your hard earn money on whatever you want.

The definition of luxury and luxury goods is broad and it largely depends on where you live. We are here to discuss the common perception of luxury goods: sports cars, expensive jewelry, designer clothing, yachts, etc. On the other side of the medal, for some people luxury goods are smartphones, new shoes or even a working shower. Luxury goods have many definitions, but the simplest one would be that luxury goods are goods that aren’t available to masses but limited to the smaller circle of people who can afford them.

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If you ever stood in front of a shop window and tried to figure out why is that handbag worth 2,500$, this may give you a good answer. We will quote Michel Chevalier and Gérald Mazzalovo, who describe luxury brands in their book Luxury Brand Management: A World of Privilege, “One could say that a luxury brand is a selective and exclusive one; that is, it is almost the only brand in its product category, giving it the desirable attributes of being scarce, sophisticated and in good taste. It also has a slightly understated and aristocratic dimension.” When it comes to categories of luxury goods, accessories make up to 30% of the market, followed by apparel and hard luxury.

As you can see, it is all about sophistication and class. There is no way these luxury goods could be bought by a factory worker. They are reserved for the selected clientele and following these trends can give us an excellent insight just how big is the difference between being rich and being poor. The fact is that there is more money spent on luxury every year. If you compare this list with our 10 countries that spend the most on infrastructure, you will see that they spend similar or even greater amounts on luxury goods.
To figure out 10 countries that spend the most on luxury goods, we took Worldwide Luxury Goods Report by Bain and Company made in 2015.Note: Spent amounts were converted from Euros to USD. We consulted other sources like Deloitte and Knight Frank that had the similar stats but they didn’t have expressed amounts of spending.