ABSTRACT
Luxury is one of the most globalized businesses in the consumer goods industries. A small group of multinational enterprises dominate the sector and control global sales networks. Of the top 100 luxury companies, 84 are based in Western Europe and the United States. Luxury sales, however, are global, with the US at the top, followed by Japan, and China. Another indicator of the globalization of the luxury industry is the high degree of standardization of goods and the existence of global brands. Today’s global luxury business is not the result of a linear expansion, but rather the outcome of mergers of small family firms into large conglomerates and the use of capital from financial markets, that occurred during the 1980s. This chapter shows the evolution of the Western luxury industry towards a global business since the mid-19th century. It demonstrates that the globalization of luxury goods, considered as the distribution and consumption of standardized products throughout the world, went through a gradual process. Luxury producers and consumers were mostly Westerners until 1980s. The real globalization started with the emergence of Japan and Middle East as a major outlets, followed by other Asian countries since 2000.
