Expanding in Korea: Asia’s most attractive luxury market

Research evidence excerpt

Expanding in Korea: Asia’s most attractive luxury market

a Ferrari body shop in Yokohama. In 2008, Ferrari

strengthened its direct control of the market by establishing Ferrari Japan K.K., a

wholly owned subsidiary that became the official importer of new Ferrari cars from

1 July 2008, while Cornes and other partners continued to operate on the retail side.

Over time, Ferrari has broadened its authorised dealer network beyond Cornes to

include additional partners across Japan. Japan has now 10 POS across the country,

including Cornes, Gran Testa, making it one of Ferrari's largest footprint in Asia, well

underpinned by a strong racing culture. In 2025, we estimate that Ferrari's

shipments to Japan stood at ~1.6k cars (half of the US), accounting for c.8% of

group' sales.

How import duties for Ferrari cars compare across Asia? For Ferrari, customs

duties differ meaningfully across Asian markets such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan and

Mainland China. However, as we show in Exhibit 1 , the headline customs duty is

only one component of the import tax burden. VAT/GST, consumption taxes, luxury

taxes, and vehicle acquisition taxes often have a much larger impact on the final

retail price. Japan and South Korea now enjoy the most favorable tax treatment for

imported Ferrari in Asia, due to free trade agreements with the EU (Korea) and

Japan's long-standing zero-duty regime. By contrast, Taiwan and Mainland China

impose multiple layers of taxation that can increase the effective retail price of a

Ferrari by 50-90% relative to its import value. From Ferrari's standpoint, these

structural differences influence not only pricing but also dealer profitability,

customer affordability, and the pace of network expansion across the region.