Vzájemné působení ekonomických a kulturních faktorů ve spotřebě luxusních šperků v Číně a Jižní Koreji

This thesis examines how economic development and cultural values shape luxury jewelry consumption in China and South Korea between 2015 and 2025. Although both markets share a Confucian background, rapid economic growth, and exposure to the same global brands, luxury demand does not operate the same way in each. The thesis therefore asks how economic and cultural factors interact to produce these different consumption patterns, drawing on secondary economic data from Statista, Euromonitor International, the World Bank, and company annual reports, together with academic literature, and treating market-structure outcomes as indirect evidence of demand. The first chapter sets out the theoretical framework: luxury as a multidimensional category, Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption, Bourdieu's concept of symbolic capital, and face as a cultural mechanism that takes the form of mianzi in China and chemyeon in South Korea; it then traces the historical development of the luxury jewelry markets in East Asia, South Korea, and China. The second chapter examines the period through economic and market indicators, including income growth, household spending, retail sales, distribution channels, and brand concentration. The third chapter analyzes the social and cultural factors behind consumption, including the sources of luxury value, the role of face and its audience, and contemporary pressures such as digital visibility, social comparison, and economic uncertainty, with Cartier and Chow Tai Fook as illustrative cases. The thesis finds that the two markets reward different sources of legitimacy: South Korean demand concentrates around globally recognized maisons, whose prestige a broad public can read immediately, while Chinese demand rests more on material worth and cultural meaning, which domestic players such as Chow Tai Fook combine through high-purity gold and culturally grounded design.