Desirability: the strategic blind spot of European brands in Asia

There is a question Western luxury brands rarely ask themselves when entering Asian markets. Beyond how to adapt their message or who should front their campaigns, it concerns their starting point: why assume that their own model of desire is the right one?

That assumption is so deeply embedded in the way these strategies are built that it is rarely questioned. The Western conception of luxury (individual expression, personal distinction, the self as a sovereign project) is treated as the universal grammar of aspiration. Its consequences surface from time to time in the public controversies and cultural missteps of Western luxury brands.

The difficulty lies in the way strategy is initially framed: the discussion moves directly to questions of adaptation, execution, and localisation.

The notion of desire (or desires) is constructed differently from one country to another, in Asia as everywhere else. Religion plays a part that Western strategies tend to overlook. In Thailand, where Theravada Buddhism shapes everyday life, wealth is often read as the fruit of past merit, which gives its display a moral dimension largely absent from Western conceptions of luxury. In China and Korea, Confucian values place hierarchy and face at the centre, so that a luxury object speaks first to one's position within a group.

History is also important. In Japan, the reverence for craftsmanship rooted in the idea of monozukuri shapes a particular attention to how an object is made. Across Southeast Asia, the relationship with Western brands still carries the memory of colonisation, or, in the case of Thailand, of a kingdom that was never colonised but long measured itself against Western ideas of civilisation. The same European house is therefore received very differently in Bangkok and in Jakarta.

To take these foundations into account is not to essentialise Asian consumers, but to recognise that the meaning of luxury is always situated, shaped by the social and symbolic structures in which it circulates. For brands, allowing this understanding to inform their practices in each Asian market appears to be a decisive condition of lasting success. For a house, this means measuring success differently. Visibility indicators such as reach or social media mentions say little about how a brand is understood in each market. Lasting presence depends on cultural legitimacy, which can be tracked over time: the way local press and creative communities refer to the house, or the place its objects take in local rituals of gifting and celebration.