What Japanese women go for

A survey carried out by Morgan Stanley on 359 Japanese women between 26 and 35 years of age shows that the preferred fashion brand is Hermès, followed by Gucci and Vuitton. But when it comes to watches and jewelry, Cartier is top of the list.

The aim of the survey was to discover the reasons behind the choice: the first place went to quality and was streaks ahead of stylistic content. Brand heritage took third place, whereas price and the use of testimonials were not priorities.

But each brand is taken into consideration and bought in different ways. They like Burberry because of its classical style (20%), good quality (19%) and tradition (17%). For Hermès it was quality that came first (24%) followed by heritage (17%) and prestige (13%). The most fashionable brand is Prada (41%), with product functionality also being mentioned (16%), followed by Gucci (38%) whose second strong point was quality (16%).

For Dior, alongside fashion content (32%) and the history of the label (13%), consumers like its high media visibility (12%); similar values were also attributed to Fendi . Vuitton was thought of as less fashionable (16%) but high in quality (33%).

One of the other facts that emerged from the Morgan Stanley research was that consumers said they prefer the fashion houses' monobrand stores to department stores.