Priya is 38 and lives in New Delhi.
On a Thursday evening she decides to replace a coat she has worn for four winters, and the search starts on her phone rather than in a mall. She types the category, and the first screen returns a retailer listing, a marketplace page, and an AI-written summary naming three labels she had not considered. She saves two of them and puts the phone down. Three weeks later she buys from one of the three. None of those brands chose what she saw first.
在印度，27%的受访者将在线搜索列为他们首次了解最新奢侈品牌的方式，而在九个市场中，这一比例分别为11%。.
Search is the largest first-awareness route in the India sample, ahead of organic social content at 14%, reversing the nine-market order, where organic social leads at 19%.
For brands whose awareness planning assumes a boutique window or an event, the first impression is formed on a surface they populate without controlling.
印度在九个市场中记录了最高的搜索量。
India’s 27% is the highest of the nine markets in the wave, ahead of the UK at 19%.
We would read this as a control question before a media question: where first awareness forms on a results page, the brand’s opening line is assembled from whatever ranks that day. Media planning, e-commerce product, store teams, and service design each carry part of the consequence, and the evidence supports a full build for the first of them only. The scale is a market-level reallocation of attention.
人工智能进入后意识：4% 个在发现阶段，43% 个在购买路径内
AI recommendation was the first awareness route for 4% of Indian respondents, level with the nine-market figure.
Inside the purchase the number changes: 43% of Indian respondents say AI-powered product recommendations featured in their most recent purchase in their primary category, against 36% across the nine markets. Search opens the relationship and AI tools work inside it, and the two are usually owned by different teams.
媒体、数字产品、门店和服务团队面临着四种不同的挑战
媒体策划。.
The 27% makes the results page the first brand-controlled surface in India, which turns query coverage from a performance line item into brand work. Name an owner for category and competitor queries in the India plan, and hold that screen to a standard. If the function acts, the brand writes the first thing a new customer reads instead of inheriting it.
The survey names the route without naming the query, so the query set comes from search data the brand already holds.
Digital product teams have the narrower question. Recommendation surfaces are load-bearing in India, at 43% against 36%, which makes product data quality a revenue input. Instrument those surfaces, and audit the catalog feed that third-party AI systems read.
The survey records which tools featured in the purchase, without attributing the decision to them, so the case rests on assortment accuracy.
Where the customer arrives having already compared, the opening exchange matters more than the greeting.
43% of Indian respondents researched online before visiting a store, against 32% across the nine markets, so the associate joins a process already in progress. Brief store teams on what the top results say about the assortment, and give them a question that finds where the customer got to.
The conversation then starts at comparison, and an associate can correct a third-party claim in person. The data shows the mix of routes without sizing what each contributed to spend.
服务设计。.
印度受访者中有 22% 人将与主要品牌进行互动时的体验评为“低难度”，而在九个市场中这一比例分别为 36%。这一差异反映了客户在了解情况后抵达门店的情况。在研究与人与人之间的接触环节中，减少步骤，首先是重新识别。主要品牌方面只评价了难度，因此这一得分并不适用于整个品牌组合。.
搜索行为划分了印度；对人工智能的接受程度却并不一样
77% of Indian respondents agree they are comfortable with AI personalizing their luxury experience, against 79% across the nine markets, so the AI figures describe usage rather than unusual openness. Human relationships hold too: 75% have an ongoing relationship with a sales associate or advisor, against 80%.
One more figure points the same way: 45% of Indian respondents bought a luxury item primarily as a financial investment in the past 12 months, against 36%. Deliberation runs longer in the India sample, and search is where it starts. A single wave measures a level, so nothing here establishes movement.
The discovery question asks about the last new-to-them brand actually bought, so the figure describes converted buyers, and it is a plurality: most Indian respondents came to their last new brand another way.
为已经开始比较的买家打造产品
The strongest signal supports proactive capability on the first screen: media planning owning category queries in India under a named owner, and product data made legible to the systems that summarize it.
Digital product and service design have a moderate signal: instrument recommendation surfaces, remove handoff steps, and measure before any service redesign. Store teams need referral capability first: an associate who can pick up a comparison in progress and route it is the difference between 22% describing a low-effort interaction and the nine-market 36%.
Priya’s shortlist was down to three before any brand knew she was looking. Whether that screen is an asset anyone owns is a decision for the next India plan.
来源说明： AFFLUENTIAL TrendLens™ Wave 1 2026，九个市场。基数：印度 n=500，中国 n=1,000，日本 n=816，美国 n=815，英国 n=669，法国 n=500，澳大利亚 n=500，印度尼西亚 n=500，泰国 n=500，总计九个市场 n=5,800。.