Clicks, Perks for China's New Luxury Shoppers

(Beijing) –Sipping a cup of Pu'er tea while watching white-gloved clerks wrap a newly purchased handbag has become something of an indispensable experience for today's luxury store shoppers in China.

But tea and other in-store perks are losing their luster as competition from online retail platforms eats into brick-and-mortar sales of luxury goods.

E-commerce is dramatically changing the face of upscale shopping in China, which, according to market tracker Fortune Character Institute, was the world's largest market for luxury consumer products in 2013. Chinese buyers spent US$ 106 billion on luxury products in 2014, an amount equal to 46 percent of the global total, according to the Forward Business and Intelligence Co., a Shenzhen-based market analysis firm.