Chinese consumers unleashed their purchasing power during the midyear “618” shopping festival, a weeks-long sales event that began in mid-May and reached a crescendo on June 18, which experts said is pivotal to bolstering the recovery of consumption and shoring up economic growth. They noted that the buying frenzy indicates the enormous vitality and potential of the country’s consumer market, with household appliances and intelligent electronic products gaining popularity among Chinese shoppers amid the country’s steps to boost consumption, including the expansion of the consumer goods trade-in program. To further stimulate people’s purchasing appetites, they called for more measures to increase household incomes, distribute consumption coupons, and nurture diversified purchasing scenarios and new types of consumption.
Data from e-commerce firm JD, which initiated the midyear promotional campaign, showed that as of 11:59 pm on June 18, the number of users placing orders more than doubled year-on-year, while the total order volume from its online and offline retail and food delivery businesses, exceeded CNY2.2 billion. The number of new electronic gadgets that saw their sales surpass CNY10 million surged 200% year-on-year during the shopping festival, which officially kicked off at 8 pm on May 30, JD said. The turnover of over 2,000 brands in the home appliances and home furnishing sector increased 100% from a year earlier. According to Tmall, Alibaba’s business-to-customer platform, the sales of 453 brands exceeded 100 million yuan from 8 pm on May 16 to midnight on June 18, an increase of 24% compared with the same period last year. The transaction volume of Apple, Midea, Xiaomi, Huawei and Nike each reached more than CNY1 billion.
In addition, outdoor sporting goods, beauty and skin care products, apparel and trendy toys witnessed robust growth on online marketplaces during the shopping festival that now extends to around one month. Noting that consumption has become the main driving force boosting China’s economic growth, Hong Yong, Associate Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said the online shopping bonanza has played a vital role in bolstering domestic demand, unleashing consumers’ purchasing potential and shoring up the economy. Hong estimated that the country’s consumer market is poised for steady growth this year, fueled by a series of pro-consumption policies, online shopping festivals and stable recovery of the macro-economy despite external uncertainties. He called for more efforts to strengthen employment support, cultivate new types of consumption in the digital, green and intelligent fields, and improve the consumption environment, the China Daily reports.
