​Understanding the world’s wealthiest luxury consumers – with BCG and Altagamma

In partnership with BCG and Altagamma, Phronesis supported one of the most influential annual studies in the luxury industry: The True-Luxury Global Consumer Insights Report 2025.

This research initiative delivered unprecedented insight into the behaviors, expectations, and evolving values of the world's top-tier luxury consumers—those whose spending decisions shape the future of the entire sector. The findings are helping global luxury brands and financial services firms realign their strategies to connect with high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in more personalized and effective ways.

Objective

With aspirational luxury spending slowing and macroeconomic uncertainty rising, global luxury brands needed a clearer view of where true demand was coming from—and how to protect their most valuable customer base. The goal was to go beyond generic segmentation and build a data-rich understanding of top-tier luxury clients: their expectations, frustrations, spending behavior, and emotional connection to luxury. This would enable brands to sharpen their focus and re-center growth strategies around their most resilient and influential clients.

Approach

Phronesis supported a multi-layered, global research initiative including:

• A quantitative survey of over 5,000 luxury consumers across 10 key markets
• A targeted deep-dive survey of 1,000+ top-tier clients spending at least €50,000 annually on luxury

The research uncovered not only how the wealthiest clients spend, but why—and what they feel is missing from the luxury experience today.

Results

The insights challenged assumptions and shifted the narrative on luxury’s growth engine:

• Top-tier luxury clients now account for 23% of all luxury spend, despite making up just 0.1% of consumers—up from 12% in 2013
• Unlike aspirational buyers, their spending is resilient and correlates more with stock market performance than GDP, indicating different levers of influence
• These clients are demanding less noise, more intimacy. The four biggest pain points were:

1. Overcommunication with generic messaging
2. Poor in-store intimacy and lack of private spaces
3. Declining product quality, even at the highest price points
4. Lack of recognition across channels despite deep loyalty

• HNWIs increasingly expect luxury brands to deliver personalized experiences, wellness-aligned offerings, and craftsmanship-led value
• A “health-as-wealth” mindset is shifting spending away from categories like apparel toward wellness and longevity treatments, , along with design and fine arts

Impact

The report has become a touchstone for luxury brand strategy in 2025 and beyond, influencing global marketing, clienteling, product development, and retail experience design, potentially providing the following benefits to readers:

• Informing client segmentation and CRM redesigns to better identify and nurture top-tier customers
• Helping leadership teams refocus brand narratives on intimacy, quality, and recognition over scale and mass appeal
• Sparking ecosystem expansions into adjacent categories such as wellness, private hospitality, and collectible design
• Enabling better alignment between brand experience and the evolving values of global HNWIs

Luxury and wealth-focused organizations—from fashion houses to private banks—are using the findings to create deeper, more profitable client relationships in an era where exclusivity, relevance, and empathy define competitive advantage.

If your brand is looking to understand your clients better, shape more compelling offers, or build thought leadership that resonates, we’d love to explore how we can help.

Download the 11th edition of BCG and Altagamma’s True-Luxury Global Consumer Insights Report 2025