May 3 - Global luxury sales should grow eight percent this year to 185 billion dollars (124 billion euros) but Japan's market will contract, according to a study by research group Bain&Company released Tuesday.

Pedestrians pass by the Hong Kong Prada flagship store

The forecast was raised from an earlier estimate of growth of between three and five percent but would still be lower than last year's result of 12-percent growth in the luxury market, as the world recovered from the economic crisis.

Bain said growth would average five to six percent a year until 2014.

Growth in the Chinese market will be 25 percent this year, it said, adding that continental China without Hong Kong and Macao was set to become the third biggest luxury market after Japan and the United States within five years.

Meanwhile the Japanese market, the study forecast, will suffer as a result of the devastating tsunami there earlier this year with a 12-month contraction of five percent and will only start recovering in the third quarter.

Bain also forecast seven percent growth for the Americas and eight percent for Europe in 2011 and said that the biggest rises for luxury goods would be for leather products, watches, jewellery and clothes.