Call for Africa to make diamond provenance disclosures with millennials

African diamond producing countries have been called upon to share information about the process of mining natural stones as millennials are concerned about provenance disclosures.  
It was revealed in a study conducted by three marketing professors, Rudy Moenaert, Michael Antioco and Henry Robben, that millennials are "today's customers" and the focus of luxury brands and the retailers are on millennials because they are the growth drivers of the luxury industry.
Antioco told a webinar on the Africa Diamond Conference American millennials had high expectations with regards to retailers, brands and countries.
"So it's important that they can learn from African diamond producing countries and that they can share that information with their peers," he said.
Antioco also said that the Indian millennials were similar to the US millennials.
"They are savvy for information and I think African countries can have a lot to share about natural diamonds and can make an impact on Indian millennials by sharing more information about what is going on in Africa about the process and many different things," he said.
The trio's study noted that a quarter of the world's population are millennials, representing 1.95 billion people of which 46% live in China, the US and India.
The study also revealed that 68% of the millennials in China will increase their demand for luxury products and 60% will make a purchase decision of a luxury item in less than a week.
"Zooming on China what we see is that there are 380 million millennials and they love to shop online, they will increase their demand for luxury products," said Antioco.
"They are very fast in making luxury purchasing decisions. What we also see is that the pickup after the COVID-19 breakdown has been quite striking in China as well."
He also said that the American luxury consumer is the most heterogeneous in the world.
"So they enjoy luxury consumption, it's very important to them, but we found that [they are] price-sensitive than millennials elsewhere in the world, which means lab-grown diamonds may have a stronger appeal to this specific market compared with natural diamonds," said Antioco.

Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished