How are Chinese consumers changing shopping habits in response to COVID-19?
In China, as the recent COVID 19 epidemic has gradually returned to normal, many consumers began to purchase again. To this end, we have summarised four main shopping habits based on the analysis of point-of-sale data from more than 100 million shoppers in China.
1. More conscious spending – essential than flashy
Offline shopping is slowly recovering but still impacted after the outbreak of COVID 19.
The supermarket volume fell as a whole, while convenience stores and drugstores continued to see positive momentum.
Chinese shopping channel behavior changes before, during and after COVID-19. Source : MIYA payment data engine
2. Other Discretionary categories, such as apparel and luxury stores, have seen a greater drop - at 88%, meaning people are cutting down to the essentials.
In terms of geography, we can see that the lower-tier cities are demonstrating a faster recovery than Tier-1 cities such as Beijing.
Source : MIYA payment engine, McKinsey data talks - retail under COVID - 19 in 2020
3. More saving and more planning.
The Chinese consumers have cut spending on 'unnecessary' goods dramatically in post-COVID-19, and the country's household deposit balance increased by 8% over the first quarter to reach 87.8 trillion RMB. 41% of the Chinese consumer is planning to spend more on wealth management, investment and mutual funds.
Shopping attitude after COVID. Source : China Economic Daily
4. Online e-commerce is more important than ever before
The trend emerging in the crisis is the growth of e-commerce. Due to the lockdowns and store closures, consumers opted for online purchases than face-to-face in-store purchases.
74% of Chinese citizens increased their online grocery visit frequency during the epidemic,
55% are likely to continue buying more groceries online after the peak of the crisis.
Source : COVID - 19 mobile survey, 3/21 - 3/25/2020 N=5,013, sampled and balanced to match population (except India, with higher focus on consuming class)
This provokes the growth of new emerging eCommerce platforms and habits, such as MissFresh, FreshHema, etc.
COVID-19 has shown the need to transform the business model to be more tech-enabled, which will both help the company operate under the constraints of pandemics and meet customer safety needs. ·
5. Health and fitness are on the rise
COVID-19 has undoubtedly shaken the lifes of all walks, and trigger customers to rethink the importance of health and fitness. In the initial recovery phase, the demand for dairy products, vegetables and eggs was 25% to 30% higher than before the crisis. Apart from this, we can see that people stocked up more fresh food than before. The data reveals that the trend toward healthier lifestyles accelerated during the COVID-19 outbreak.
People stocked up on essentials and bought more fresh foods Source : MIYA payment engine
For example, Keep, one of the most popular fitness apps in China, saw user numbers jump 12% year on year in the first quarter of 2020; Nike's first-quarter digital sales in China increased 30% on year after the company launched home workouts via its mobile app.
The data reveals that the trend toward healthier lifestyles accelerated during the COVID-19 outbreak.
6. Six new segments of consumption are formed
After COVID 19, six new consumption segments are established.
The six categories include beauty & care, summer clothing, Home & Decoration, Health & hygiene, outdoor activities and festivals & celebrations. We believe that purchasing power will grow rapidly in the consumption mentioned above sectors.
Six new segments of consumption are formed Source : Google-Marketing
7. Offline loyalty drops Chinese customers are more willing to try new stores and new brands.
We can see that about 14% of respondents said that they did not plan to return to the original store choices, and 6% of respondents did not intend to restore the previous brand.
More shoppers shifted away from their primary store and did not want to switch back. It is worth noting that shoppers switch brands based on convenience and promotions/displays.
Source : McKinsey & Company COVID - 19 mobile survey 3/21 - 3/23/2020 N=611 Sampled and balanced to match China’s general population 18 - 65 years-old
Source : McKinsey & Company COVID - 19 mobile survey 3/21 - 3/23/2020 N=611 Sampled and balanced to match China’s general population 18 - 65 years-old
Therefore, digital promotions are essential to rebuild and maintain brand loyalty.
Summary
"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."China media landscape was highly saturated before the crisis, with new apps, new media platforms, new social media coming out every month. The COVID 19 is a time to reset the cluttered digital media landscape, as the tough business market would allow the most robust company that is most digital-savvy, sufficiently agile and financially sound media companies to survive in this climate.