Release date: June, 18 2020

This update in our continuing Covid-19 research reports on data collected among 429 luxury buying, highly affluent individuals from China, USA, France and the UK between June 9-15, 2020. The median HHI when normalized to USD was $244,000. To provide some context around the timing of our data collection in relation to the outbreak we can illustrate on a country level the field dates in regards to new confirmed cases of Covid-19: 

Sample Sizes & MARKETS

Wave 1 (March, 24-30): USA (107), UK (101), FRANCE (106), CHINA (reporting on 560)

Wave 2 (April, 27-30): USA (110), UK (117), FRANCE (105), CHINA (134)

Wave 3: (June 9-15): USA (99), UK (115), FRANCE (117), CHINA (98)

Do you feel that the worst of the health effects of COVID-19 are now behind you and your community?

There is a natural correlation between the easing of governmental restrictions and consumers sense of severity of the health crisis. In the current wave of data, belief that the worst of the health effects were behind the respondents communities continued to improve in the US, UK and France. Now for the first time in our research more French and British respondents are stating they believed the worst was behind us as opposed to ‘yet to come’.   In the US, the number is close to parity but still slightly more respondents are stating that the worst is yet to come.

In a surprise twist, Chinese respondents are now slightly less optimistic than they were in wave 2 (late April) with respect to overcoming the health effects. Although 70% believe that the worse of the health effects are behind, the number of respondents unsure has increased by 4pts and those believing that the worse is yet to come rose by 3pts to 21%.

Do you feel that the worst of the commercial effects of COVID-19 are now behind you and your community?

Interestingly, in the data related to whether or not the worst of the commercial effects are behind the respondents’ communities, we start to see different narratives emerging from the data. In the US, progress on this front has been almost perfectly linear and should the trend continue, in about a month, we would expect more respondents to report that the worst commercial effects are behind them. In the UK, the data shows a sharp increase in people thinking the worst is behind them (from 5% to 14%) but there is still a huge disparity here. More than 5 times more UK respondents feel that the worst is still ahead. France shows a similar evolution as seen in the UK, with a dramatic jump in positivity (from 13% to 20%) but still, more than 3 times more FR respondents feel the worst is yet to come commercially. 

Among our Chinese respondents, similar to the previous question related to the health effects of Covid19, we see a marked reversal in optimism (from 64% to 52%).  Still a majority, but this is trend reversal is statistically significant.

We are seeing a lot more parity emerging within the financial impacts on households due to Covid-19. We did not delineate positive effects due to governmental stimulus but left this more general in nature. The data from the most current wave shows that French respondents are reporting the least negative effect on household finances due to Covid-19.

When comparing the movements from wave to wave between the four countries, we are reporting significant changes from Wave 2. The data shows significant improvements in all markets except the USA. Interestingly, France has seen the most extreme improvement and currently has the least negative overall effect on HH finances.

Most of the world is asking the question “When will things get back to normal”. We are also curious about this so we asked our respondents when they thought normalcy would return to their communities. The data below shows a derived calculation to estimate the median time expected by the respondents. Keep in mind that this is not a prediction but rather an estimation which is unfortunately entirely outside of the control of our respondents.

Interestingly, due to the fact that the median respondents from the UK and US fell into the highest range (6 months or longer) this effects our ability to estimate with any precision, so we can only say that the median expected return to normal date for the US & UK is currently longer than 6 months.

In France, UK and USA we also asked consumers which brands or companies they thought were standing out as doing a particularly good job during the pandemic. As we advance through the outbreak, changes in the types of companies mentioned wave to wave reflect the changing needs of customers as well as the effectiveness of brands’ messaging programs. In the current wave here are all the companies that received 2 or more mentions, there is an ordering from most mentions to least (left to right). 

We hope that you found this data to be of interest. We would really appreciate your feedback about our research by completing this short, 2 min survey: