Expat Relationships and How Does Lingerie Fit In?!

As you may or may not already know, I am the MD for Thaivisa, an online media for foreigners with an interest in Thailand. In fact from the 1.2 million visitors each month, two thirds of this traffic comes from within Thailand – so expats or tourists already in the country. An interesting question came up recently regarding expat relationships.

Just the other week Thaivisa was contacted by a lingerie business curious as to the opportunity to promote on our site. My initial instinct was to think this would be a long shot for them but then it dawned on me: Expats must buy gifts for their loved ones.

The problem was with no market intelligence we could not scope the actual potential for them. So we decided to conduct an online survey to ascertain expats buying propensity for lingerie and underwear for the girlfriends and wives.

The survey attracted over 500 respondents and 396 of those were expats and so, using only expats replies, this is what we learned.

93% have Partners

Expats like having relationships just as people do world over, with only 8% being single. Of the 93%, 87% were with Thai partners.

38% buy gifts 3 or more times a year

A fairly healthy figure of 38% treat their partners outside the traditional birthday and Christmas annual gift buying occasions and buy more than 3 gifts per year. And be careful ladies, 1 in 10 said they never buy presents for their partners.

We are not all Cheap Charlies!

27% of us said that when we do buy gifts for our partners that we spend over 3,000 baht, with 60% saying they spend at least 1,000 baht. 15% said they spend less than 1,000 baht for a present – I can see some upset birthday girls across Thailand with that tiny spend.

…And what of the Lingerie?

So far so good, us expats seem to be good all round guys when it comes to treating the other half, but could we bring ourselves to buy sexy lingerie for our partners? And the answer is yes, 67% of expats surveyed said they would be comfortable buying lingerie for their wives and girlfriends.

So by and large us expats – based on this survey at least – seem a fairly romantic bunch of individuals. As for the 1 in 10 who never buy gifts for their partners, well that is another story!