Affluent Hong Kong consumers leading mobile trends

Hong Kong - Hong Kong's affluent consumers top other Asia markets when it comes to accessing news and financial information on their mobile phones, at 22% and 18% respectively, according to the 2007 Synovate Pan Asia Pacific Cross Media (PAX) survey.

Hong Kong locals are also the top owners of luxury watches each costing at least US$500 (HK$3 880) across Asia at 42% far ahead from Bangkok, which takes second place at 24%.

Additionally, Synovate PAX has segmented its affluent consumers into five distinct groups based on differing attitudes, media and product consumption patterns.

In Hong Kong, Gimme's dominate at 36.4%, Executive Warriors in second place (21%), Luxury Loyalists (20.9%), Work to Live's (16.3%) and HUMmers (5.3%).

Gimme's are skewed towards females between 25 to 34 that have high ownership of luxury products such as designer clothing and jewellery with high viewership of terrestrial TV and likely to view content on mobile phones but show less care towards environmental protection.

Executive Warriors are mainly males between 25 to 44 that are frequent business travellers with high ownership of PDA and hybrid mobile phones that value having an international perspective thus high viewership to cable and satellite channels and appreciate regional print.

Luxury Loyalists mostly female with half of them 45 and above have high ownership of luxury products, specifically jewellery and watches and tend to travel more for leisure than business with low levels of media consumption.

This year's results reveal that local affluent are putting their money in financial services and property compared to shopping.

However, Clare Lui, associate director in media research for Synovate assured marketers that "luxury still rules in Hong Kong".

"Despite the relatively lower interest in shopping for general household products, Hong Kong still has by far the highest intention to purchase designer goods and luxury watches across Asia Pacific."