General Findings

As our survey results show, a significant 75% of respondents currently own luxury handbags and/or accessories, and 33% of those who do not currently own any of such products expressed their intentions to purchase them within the next five years. Those who did not intend to purchase cited the reasons of luxury handbags/accessories being unnecessary (43%) and them being overpriced and not worth the money (29%).

Among a total of 33 brands cited, Coach emerged as the most commonly owned luxury handbag brand (16.67%), followed by Prada (12.32%), and Longchamp (11.59%). Kate Spade is the 4^th most common brand (9.42%), while a very small percentage of respondents (2.17%) own handbags from Michael Kors. We attribute this to Coach being a largely affordable brand.

For the brands of luxury accessories the respondents currently own, a total of 44 brands were cited. Likewise, Coach (16.13%) and Prada (13.71%) emerged as the two most common brands, followed by Louis Vuitton (7.26%). Kate Spade is also again the 4^th most common brand (5.65%) while an extremely small percentage of respondents (0.81%) own accessories from Michael Kors.

In addition, the survey revealed consumers’ motivations for purchasing luxury handbags and/or accessories. Consumers cited “to reward themselves”, “feel good factor”, and “investment in a quality product” as the top three reasons for purchasing such products.

We also wanted to find out more about a consumer’s typical decision-making process. Consumers ranked the following attributes in order of decreasing importance as follows:

Quality
Design
Price
Material
Brand
Versatility
After-sales service
Country of origin

Consumers ranked the following specific brand attributes in order of decreasing importance as follows:

Brand reputation
Brand image
Brand as a reflection of the consumer’s personality
Brand values
Brand popularity
Brand endorsement

These findings provide useful insights into aspects that Coach should work on. For example, Coach’s point of difference of having excellent product quality should be made more apparent to consumers.

We also sought to uncover the search mediums that consumers typically utilize to derive information about the luxury handbags/accessories that they intend to purchase. The most popular search mediums include the brand’s website, visiting physical stores, magazines, catalogues (both online and/or print), as well as reviews from family and/or friends. These are therefore some of the consumer touchpoints that Coach can consider leveraging on or enhancing.