China Herald: What do China's super wealthy want? Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf

The super-wealthy in China get ever more spending power, but very few know what they are actually looking for. Hurun and the Imdustrial Bank asked them and Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf shares in the China Daily the results.

The China Daily:

"Most brands recognize the spending power of the Chinese luxury consumer, but we are attempting to ask the question of 'Who are these people are and what makes them tick?'" said Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report chairman and chief researcher.

Between October 2011 and January 2012, Industrial Bank and the Hurun Research Institute conducted 878 face-to-face interviews with the bank's private banking customers in 29 cities around China.

The average personal wealth of respondents was 49 million yuan. Annually, they spend 3 percent of their personal wealth.

Travel, daily luxuries and children's education have become the top consumption hotspots.

More than half of high net worth individuals expect their expenditure on travel to increase, with health and wellness and children's education close behind at 40 percent.

China's high net worth individuals are paying ever more attention to their health, with 73 percent choosing to have regular health checks and a further 10 percent already having a personal physician. Children's education is the wealthy people's third-largest area of spending, with 85 percent saying they plan to send their children abroad to study.

Among ultra-high net worth individuals, the figure is 90 percent.

High net worth individuals are also showing interest in value-added services provided by private banking, with 60 percent of the respondents wanting their private bank to provide luxury travel advice, half wanting health-related services and more than one-third favoring services related to their children's education.

More in the China Daily.

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

More on Rupert Hoogewerf and China's wealthy at Storify.