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Stevens, PA—Unity Marketing's latest survey of affluent consumer confidence has found a strong upturn in their feelings about their financial status and prospects for the future. This resulted in Unity Marketing’s exclusive Luxury Consumption Index (LCI) rising at its fastest rate ever since its inception in 2004. 

This rise in confidence among affluent consumers also encouraged them to pick up the pace of shopping in the third quarter, with luxury spending up 25.8% over the second quarter of this year. 

Unity’s survey was conducted from October 9-15, and polled 1,289 affluent consumers (average income $290.6K; average age, 44.

"Over half (52 percent) of affluent consumers surveyed feel they are financially better off today than twelve months ago; this measure hasn't been this high since Q1 of 2011.  Rising even more sharply is the percentage of luxury consumers who feel the country as a whole is doing better now as compared with three months ago. Some 37% of affluent surveyed feel the country is now moving in the right direction, up 15 percentage points from last quarter," says Unity Marketing president Pamela Danziger, author of Putting the Luxe Back in Luxury: How New Consumer Values are Redefining the Way We Market Luxury. 

Danziger says luxury consumer confidence—and correspondingly spending—had been restrained for a long time, but the latest survey shows a marked shift to growing confidence among these “heavy lifters” of the U.S. economy.

“During the first half of 2012, affluent consumers were restrained in their spending on luxury goods and services, but they picked up the pace strongly during the third quarter survey," she said. 

These categories posted the strongest quarter-over-quarter increase from Q2 to Q3:

• Luxury clothing and apparel, up 95.2%
• Luxury kitchenware and cooks' tools, up 83.1%
• Luxury beauty, cosmetics, fragrances, up 75.4%
• Luxury dining, up 67.7%,
• Luxury fashion accessories, up 52.2%

Separately, the National Retail Federation’s annual holiday spending survey indicates 22.5% of respondents plan to buy jewelry this season, the highest level of demand since 2007, before the recession. The NRF figure corresponds closely with findings from the American Affluence Research Center, whose semi-annual survey of affluent consumers found jewelry as a gift plan or wish for 22% of affluent women.

AARC’s figure—which measures intent among affluent consumers only—is essentially unchanged from last year’s findings, whereas NRF’s figures measure the general population. But among AARC respondents, jewelry came in third as a gift choice behind gift cards and clothing, whereas NRF’s broader-based survey put it at number seven. Gift cards and clothing were the top two gift choices among both AARC’s affluent and NRF’s general population respondents.