Single’s Day and import expo to push domestic consumption and imports to new highs
Nov-03-2020 By : fcccadmin
Two events in the first half of November are set to push domestic consumption and imports to new highs. The China International Import Expo (CIIE) from November 4 till 10 and the Single’s Day shopping extravaganza on November 11.
The CIIE will welcome more than 70% of the world’s Fortune 500 companies and major players in different industries, which also participated in the first two editions, as well as newcomers to the Expo, including U.S. medical devices company Abbott, Swiss luxury goods group Richemont and French tire manufacturer Michelin. The number of Japanese exhibitors passed 400, up 10% from last year’s Expo, while the number of French exhibitors increased by 7% to 80. The Expo’s total exhibition area has been expanded by 30,000 square meters, covering six exhibitions – food and agricultural products, automobiles, equipment, consumer goods, healthcare and services. Altogether, 112,000 domestic companies from across the country have formed 39 trade missions, and the number of registered professional buyers reached 400,000. Two-thirds of them come from China’s three major economic engines – the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
Almost 1,400 of the companies import more than USD100 million in goods annually. Vice Mayor of Shanghai Chen Yin said the city has attached great importance to epidemic control and has taken a series of measures to ensure the safety of the Expo amid the Covid-19 pandemic, including an over-arching epidemic prevention plan, 23 special programs, six contingency response plans in case of an outbreak, and 13 technical protocols and manuals. Among the measures, all Expo participants will need to take Covid-19 tests and temperature checks, and submit health declarations. Visitors from overseas will undergo a 14-day quarantine. In the Expo venue, five medical stations and 25 temporary observation zones with 400 medics are ready to receive Covid-19 cases or other emergencies. Across the city, 33 hospitals were designated to handle any emergency cases from the Expo. This year’s Expo will not be open to the general public and there will not be extended exhibitions as in previous editions, but many of the products displayed will continue to be available to Chinese buyers and consumers at 56 trade and shopping centers across the city, the China Daily reports.
About 66% of Chinese consumers will buy domestic brands during the upcoming Singles’ Day online shopping festival around November 11, and the majority of them cite “patriotism” as a primary reason, a survey from AlixPartners, a global consulting firm, showed. The survey, which covered more than 2,000 consumers across China, also showed that 57% said that they will spend less on U.S. brands than they did last year. In a July survey by the Global Times, 63.7% of respondents said they had less trust in and preference for U.S. products. Interest in products from India, Australia, Japan and the UK also dropped.
Analysts said that although consumers’ brand preference is linked to geopolitics, the shift to domestic brands is also due to the increasing quality and competitiveness of Chinese brands. “When I was choosing a rowing machine online, I found some domestic brands such as Xiaomi have higher ratings than foreign brands, as well as being more cost-effective and using the latest technology,” Irene Chen, a Beijing-based white-collar worker, told the Global Times. “If Chinese brands are indeed better than foreign ones, why should we insist on buying foreign brands?”, Chen said. Moreover, analysts said that Chinese consumers, especially young ones, are becoming more rational and focused on product quality rather than its origin. The survey found that 39 percent of Chinese consumers plan to spend more during the Single’s Day shopping spree this year than last year. Only 15% plan to spend less, citing lingering concerns over the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy, according to the AlixPartners survey.
This year is the 11th anniversary of Double 11, which Alibaba first staged in 2009, when 24-hour sales totaled USD7.8 million. Last year, USD39.5 billion in sales were reported. Meanwhile, the shopping festival has been stretched out over several weeks. In the first nine months of this year, online retail sales rose 9.7% from a year earlier to CNY6.65 trillion, with food and apparel making up about 55% of the physical goods sold.
Foreign brands preparing to participate in Single’s Day e-commerce event
Oct-27-2020 By : fcccadmin
More and more international brands are seeing the Single’s Day – also known as Double Eleven – shopping event on November 11 as an important opportunity to boost their annual sales in China. Some 800 million consumers are expected to take part in the event, making it the biggest spending spree of the year, according to analysts. E-commerce platforms, including JD.com, Tmall, and Suning, are already seeing record sales and attendance, with businesses at home and abroad scrambling to snap up virtual shelves, hoping to make up for this year’s losses amid the outbreak of the coronavirus. JD.com said 90 million shoppers and 500,000 items from 100 countries and regions will participate in this year’s event, offering discounts totaling CNY1 billion. Its rival Tmall, Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, will feature products from more than 220 countries and regions. Several international luxury brands will launch promotional campaigns hoping to attract more customers in China, according to a report from Tmall. On the special shopping mall of import products on Tmall – Tmall international section – more than 26,000 foreign brands from 84 countries plan to participated in the festival, among which more than 2,600 new brands which joined for the first time, bringing a total of 1.2 million new imported products to Chinese consumers.
Flagship stores of cosmetic brands – including Clarins, Estée Lauder, Lancôme, SK-II, Sulwhasoo, YSL and Armani – will offer lower prices on Tmall than in duty-free shops. Apart from companies that were already cooperating with Tmall, such as Chanel and Dior, an increasing number of global luxury brands are signing up for this year’s Double Eleven for the first time. A discount of 33% on Shanghai Disneyland tickets is also newly launched. German sports car brand Porsche has set up a Tmall outlet, and other overseas car brands have offered up to 50% discounts on some models. Vacheron Constantin, a Swiss luxury watch brand, has decided to release its latest products – originally scheduled for Christmas release – on this year’s Double Eleven.
Overseas goods will be one of the highlights this year, as Chinese consumers cannot travel abroad to shop due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has seriously restricted international travel. Now they can buy all kinds of imported goods on the e-commerce platforms without leaving their homes. Tmall has set up a special online shopping mall for overseas products, and consumers can receive their products, starting 72 hours after placing their orders. Tmall’s international section is this year importing 1,000 tons of Uruguayan milk, 2.6 million bottles of French wine and 1.6 million liters of camel’s milk from Dubai.
Based on the transaction volume of e-commerce platforms in the past two years – CNY395.32 billion in 2018 at an annual growth rate of 33.81%, and CNY600 billion in 2019 with annual growth of 51.77% – this year’s online transaction value of the Double Eleven festival is expected to reach CNY856.74 billion, according to a report from the China e-commerce research center.
As the only major economy expected to record a positive economic growth this year, many international brands are seeing China as their main opportunity for growth in 2020. “Consumer demand for the whole year will explode during the Double Eleven shopping spree. In addition, active participation of international brands in the festival with huge discounts indicates that overseas brands have confidence in China’s consumer market. In other words, the Chinese market is the main source for international brands’ annual sales performance,” Tian Yun, Vice Director of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, told the Global Times. According to incomplete statistics, subsidies offered by e-commerce platforms, including consumption coupons and cash subsidies, will total nearly CNY100 billion. In addition to subsidies, new forms of online shopping have also attracted consumers. Live-streaming is becoming a new growth point in e-commerce sales. Last week, 108 million people watched the live-streaming of Viya on Taobao, Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, when 30,000 lipsticks from Armani were sold in the first few minutes. Some specific discounts are only available during these live-streaming sessions, the Global Times reports.
Chinese eager to spend more during National Day holiday
Oct-06-2020 By : fcccadmin
Chinese consumers appear to be spending more money during the National Day holiday than last year. On the first two days of the eight-day holiday (October 1 through 8), Chinese consumers spent CNY628 billion using UnionPay cards, up 11.8% year-on-year. On National Day, October 1, which this year overlapped with the Mid-Autumn Festival, the transaction volume recorded by UnionPay reached CNY330 billion, up 15.5% on a yearly basis. “With the recovery of tourists’ confidence, higher travel demand will be activated in the country. Trips to western China, island tours, and tailored road trips are expected to become important forces that help the recovery of the tourism sector after Covid-19,” said Gou Zhipeng, President of Qunar, a Beijing-based online travel agency.
The extended National Day holiday has been the longest public vacation since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year. Long distance trips and tours of western parts of China have seen growing popularity. Tibet, Xinjiang and Ningxia saw the fastest growth of spending on a yearly basis in the first two days of the holiday week, according to UnionPay. “With vast land and lower population density, western China fits with the psychology of tourists to avoid crowds in the post-epidemic period,” said Zhang Jinshan, Tourism Industry Professor at Beijing Union University. “In recent years, the National Day holidays were often peak periods for international trips. Due to the pandemic this year, Chinese tourists chose domestic long-distance trips instead, and it helped the western region to gain popularity,” Zhang added. On the first two days of the eight-day holiday, tourists’ spending on hotels in Tibet more than doubled year-on-year, while spending on catering grew 49%. In Xinjiang, the amount spent on flight tickets tripled, and spending on admission tickets for sightseeing spots in Ningxia increased by 20%.
Meanwhile, Chinese consumers have shown continued enthusiasm for the Shanghai Disneyland theme park. The average price of bed-and-breakfast home stays within 3 kilometers of the park was higher than CNY1,000 per night during the holiday, Qunar found. About 550 million people are forecast to take domestic trips during the holiday, about 70% of the level seen last year, according to an earlier estimate by the China Tourism Academy. With more than half of the holiday over, some flight tickets and hotels have reduced prices. For instance, on October 5, a one-way flight from Beijing to Lijiang, Yunnan province, was selling for CNY396. A one-way flight from Beijing to Sanya, Hainan province, cost only CNY445. Prices of flights from Shanghai to some top domestic tourism destinations also dropped, according to Qunar, the China Daily reports.
“618” shopping festival off to a strong start as consumers are eager to spend
Jun-09-2020 By : fcccadmin
China’s first nationwide shopping spree after the Covid-19 endemic got off to a strong start, reflecting a gradual revival of consumer confidence amid brighter economic prospects. Live-streaming on Alibaba-backed Tmall.com generated transactions valued at CNY2 billion within the first 90 minutes on the first day of the “618” shopping festival, which lasts until June 20. The company said it will invite 600 entrepreneurs to give live-streaming presentations during the shopping festival, including Dong Mingzhu, Chairwoman of Chinese home appliance firm Gree Electric Appliances, which operates more than 30,000 brick-and-mortar stores across the country. Apple’s performance during the largest mid-year shopping festival in China is in the spotlight. Sales of iPhones on Alibaba-backed Tmall exceeded CNY500 million within five hours on June 1 – a record for iPhone on the platform and equivalent to a day’s sales in China, said Alibaba. Another e-commerce platform JD.com also had a better-than-expected performance on the first day of the shopping festival, with sales of luxury products skyrocketing 400% year-on-year in the first hour, and sales of cosmetics surging 500%.
One white-collar worker in Beijing commented to the Global Times that “as most Chinese cities have come out of lockdown, I believe that more consumers want to spend after a long period of staying inside”. Dong Dengxin, Director of the Finance and Securities Institute at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times that online shopping will be a highlight of China’s economic growth this year. He predicted the sector will grow at least 20% in the second quarter. The number of packages handled in May in Zhejiang province reached 1.68 billion, up 52.5% year-on-year. Wei Jianguo, former Chinese Vice Commerce Minister, told the Global Times that China is expected to exceed the U.S. to become the largest consumption market this year. “Domestic retail sales are expected to reach CNY45 trillion in 2020, up 8% year-on-year, with new types of consumption predicted to be robust,” he said.
The Shanghai Daily remarks that new habits of shopping and even dining are appearing. Research and data firm Kantar, in a global survey of more than 45,000 consumers in late April, found a third of households increased their online spending during lockdown. At the same time, the percentage of people who say they will pay more attention to prices has increased to 68% from 59% about one month ago. Much discretionary spending will be put on hold, as the risks and uncertainties experienced during the pandemic made people save more. “E-commerce and particularly ensuring a great customer experience need to become a mainstay of every consumer brand,” said Rosie Hawkins, Chief Innovation Officer at Kantar.
About two-thirds of respondents in the Kantar survey said they prefer to purchase goods and services from their own country. China has become the top country under the “buy local” slogan, with 87% of people here expressing that view, followed by consumers in Italy, South Korea and Spain. Retailers or manufacturers that were slow to respond to the online shift will be left behind for certain, Christine Peng, Manager of the China Consumer Sector at Swiss investment bank UBS said. “In the short term, discounts will be a major driver of consumer spending,” Peng added. Out of 10 categories where consumers said they intend to increase spending in the next six months, the majority are related to daily necessities. Nutritional supplements were the one exception. Over 55% of respondents said they have purchased more lower-price products following the virus outbreak, and 57% said they intend to buy more sustainable or environmentally friendly products in the future.
JD.com came up with the idea of a mid-year sale more than ten years ago and it has since become the second biggest shopping festival after Singles Day on November 11. The June 18 sales campaign has turned into a multi-week event and this year online retailers are offering big discounts to woo consumers gradually returning to their shopping routines. More than 25,000 brands from 92 countries and regions are offering over 400,000 new products through Alibaba’s imported goods subsidiary Tmall Global.
Double Five shopping season attracts Shanghai consumers
May-12-2020 By : fcccadmin
After the Double Five shopping season was launched in Shanghai on May 5, combined retail sales reached CNY15.68 billion exactly 24 hours after the launch of the event. Imported goods fairs and various promotional campaigns were staged by the city’s domestic and foreign retailers, while online discounts were sought after by shoppers as consumption sentiment built up during the Labor Day holiday. Metro China’s spring sales fair includes 500 types of imported goods from more than 30 countries and regions. Wumei Group President and Chairman of Metro Hong Kong Holdings Xu Ying said it will support Metro’s digitalization efforts to cater to local trends. Wumei Group has an 80% stake in Metro China after completing a €1 billion takeover in April. More than 3,500 types of Metro’s home items will be included in the city’s shopping season, which ends in June. Top retailers like Walmart, Muji, H&M, Starbucks and Lyfen were also using WeChat payment’s mini program to give away coupons worth a total of CNY2 billion.
Five-time Olympic Games champion diver Wu Minxia, a Shanghai native, was joined by top Taobao live host Li Jiaqi at the launch event for a live-streaming session to sell local products. The duo attracted more than 3 million viewers in 20 minutes and promoted famous brands like Maling canned pork luncheon meat, Bright Diary milk and Shanghai Jahwa’s personal care items. Taobao live hosts and merchants held more than 10,000 livestreams to help sell to consumers nationwide. Multinational companies like Nike, Adidas, Lancome and local brands such as Dr Yu, HotWind and Shuixing Home Textile were among top-selling brands on Alibaba’s Tmall.
At Alibaba’s Freshippo stores in Shanghai, sales in the first three days of the Labor Day holiday were 40% higher than daily average sales in April. Local online construction and interior design firm Qeeka said its promotional season, which started in late April, has helped connect decoration firms and consumers through digital means and integrated sales promotions for furniture and kitchenware. Some consumers prefer online stores to avoid large crowds.
Suning Carrefour Chief Operation Officer Zhang Qizhe said sales at Carrefour’s Shanghai stores have returned to normal levels from a year ago since April and the delivery business is also picking up steadily. Dingdong Maicai, a local online fresh food vendor, said since the Labor Day holiday average daily sales in Shanghai climbed 40% from normal days to about CNY30 million. In Shanghai, it now serves around 6 million households, doubling its user base before the coronavirus epidemic outbreak. It has also offered online cooking tutorials to help shoppers select ingredients, the Shanghai Daily reports.
As an important part of the two-month Double Five Shopping Festival in Shanghai, the 2020 Shanghai Imported Goods Festival was also launched. More than 500 offline stores and over 40 online platforms are participating in the festival, including platforms offering the “6+365 days” exhibition and trading services such as Greenland Global Community Trading Hub, Hongqiao Import Commodity Exhibition and Trading Center, and ymatou.com. The third China International Import Expo in November has so far attracted 1,300 foreign exhibitors, covering 75% of the overall planned exhibition area, according to Sun Chenghai, Deputy Director of the China International Import Expo Bureau. The company said that a number of overseas brands will join the Suning Global platform during the shopping festival, while more international brands are also in discussion with Suning Global to open official flagship stores on the platform. The online flagship store of Laox, Japan’s biggest duty free store, launched an exclusive Double Five Shopping Festival zone for Shanghai consumers. It offers 50% discounts on a variety of goods, said Fu Luyong, Managing Director of Laox China. Carrefour will organize a “global food season” activity in Shanghai, offering food and beverages from 39 countries and regions, including over 3,700 imported food products from nearly 350 brands and more than 200 imported wines from over 70 brands from around the world.
Online spending surged during the Labor Day holiday. China UnionPay said total transactions over the five-day holiday period reached CNY1.57 trillion, up 7.7% compared with the three-day Qingming Festival break in early April and 16% higher than the average weekend spending in April. Shanghai retail conglomerate Bailian Group said sales between April 26 and May 3 had reached CNY1.92 billion, with CNY290 million coming from digital shops, the Shanghai Daily reports. WeChat’s total offline payment volume during the holiday picked up 30% from a month ago with the fastest growing segments including entertainment, dining and retail.
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