---
title: "A Chilly Mid-Autumn: Who Stole the Peak Season Gift Sales?"
description: "China's traditional culture, spanning thousands of years, has fostered a unique 'gift culture.' From festive visits to daily calls, carrying gifts is essential to complete social interactions. With economic growth, the demand for gifts has risen annually, and by 2019, the market scale exceeded 800 billion yuan. Gift boxes, with their exquisite packaging and quality, have become the mainstream choice. However, this year, due to the pandemic, the gift box market has seen a decline in both volume and price during the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays."
author: "陈峰"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-09-30"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-chilly-mid-autumn-who-stole-the-peak-season-gift-sales-04da430c/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-chilly-mid-autumn-who-stole-the-peak-season-gift-sales-04da430c.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wlOtZjsrPcHoZjQKa6u2_Q"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E8%BF%99%E4%B8%AA%E4%B8%AD%E7%A7%8B%E6%9C%89%E7%82%B9%E5%86%B7-%E8%B0%81%E5%81%B7%E8%B5%B0%E4%BA%86%E7%A4%BC%E5%93%81%E6%97%BA%E5%AD%A3%E7%9A%84%E9%94%80%E9%87%8F-04da430c.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/a-chilly-mid-autumn-who-stole-the-peak-season-gift-sales-04da430c/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# A Chilly Mid-Autumn: Who Stole the Peak Season Gift Sales?

> China's traditional culture, spanning thousands of years, has fostered a unique 'gift culture.' From festive visits to daily calls, carrying gifts is essential to complete social interactions. With economic growth, the demand for gifts has risen annually, and by 2019, the market scale exceeded 800 billion yuan. Gift boxes, with their exquisite packaging and quality, have become the mainstream choice. However, this year, due to the pandemic, the gift box market has seen a decline in both volume and price during the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays.

China's traditional culture, spanning thousands of years, has fostered a unique 'gift culture.' From festive visits to daily calls, carrying a few boxes of gifts is essential to conclude social interactions.
With the development of the national economy, the demand for gifts has increased year by year, bringing vigorous growth to the gift market. According to data, by 2019, the market demand for gifts had exceeded 800 billion yuan. Gift box products, with their exquisite packaging and superior quality, have gradually become the mainstream choice for most consumers.
This year, due to the pandemic in the first half, the gift market during the Spring Festival saw a significant decline. After the mid-year improvement in the pandemic, major channels pinned their hopes for a gift market rebound on the 'Golden Week' of the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival. But what is the actual situation?
New Distribution reporters visited major supermarkets to conduct a survey, presenting a real picture of the gift box market.
**-01-
Encountering a Cold Snap: Gift Box Market Sees 'Decline in Both Volume and Price'**
After visiting multiple supermarkets, similar information was gathered: before the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays, sales of gift boxes and gift packs for products other than mooncakes declined compared to last year.
'Except for mooncake gift boxes, other categories of gift boxes are not selling as well as in previous years,' a supermarket manager told reporters. 'We thought the gift market missed during the Spring Festival would be partially recovered during this double festival, but it's not the case at all.'
Moreover, during the visits, reporters found that even in large supermarkets like Carrefour and China Resources Vanguard, the best-selling mooncake gift boxes were mostly priced under 100 yuan, with significant promotions.
'Last year, gift boxes priced at 200-300 yuan were common; this year, most are selling at 80-90 yuan, with a promotion of 50 yuan off for purchases over 150 yuan,' a salesperson in the mooncake section told reporters. This means two boxes of 80-yuan mooncake gift boxes cost only 55 yuan per box after discount.
Additionally, reporters noticed many mooncake gift boxes with 'rock-bottom prices' on the shelves, selling at 24.9 yuan per box, with further discounts for bulk purchases, bringing the price down to about 20 yuan per box. Despite the low prices, these mooncake gift boxes offer a wide variety of flavors, including classic five-nut and red bean, as well as refreshing fruit and seaweed flavors. Many consumers were gathered around the shelves.
'Sales are still considerable, mainly low-priced gift boxes. Both young and old prefer these mooncake gift boxes, while loose mooncakes are not selling as well, as gift boxes are not much more expensive than loose ones,' said a person in charge at this China Resources Vanguard store.
The person also noted that besides mooncakes, sales of other gift box products, such as milk and alcoholic beverages, are generally not as good as before. Last year, there were 18 floor displays for various gift boxes; this year, only 15 were set up, with the remaining space used for promotional products with regular packaging.
From large supermarkets, the gift box market has generally seen a decline in sales, and even the popular mooncake gift boxes have seen a drop in price, with affordable gift boxes being more favored by consumers. In other words, the gift box market has experienced a 'decline in both volume and price.'
Perhaps the surveyed market is only a partial region, but undoubtedly, based on current information, even though the domestic pandemic has improved, the offline gift box market is still facing a cold snap and has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
**-02-
Mid-Autumn Gift Box Performance Below Expectations; H2 Performance Faces Challenges**
Looking back, with the rapid development of China's social economy, sales during peak seasons like Mid-Autumn have been growing year by year. The rapid development of high-end gift box packaging in the packaging industry also reflects this. However, this year, due to the pandemic, some unexpected changes have occurred.
I was somewhat surprised by the survey results mentioned above. Previously, there were many reports that after being cooped up for over half a year due to the pandemic, people would visit more during the National Day and Mid-Autumn Golden Week, making up for the missed Spring Festival gifts. Some industry analysts also predicted that during this Mid-Autumn and National Day period, sales would surge and gift boxes would sell well.
To this end, I deliberately checked some data. For example, Ctrip's '2020 National Day Holiday Travel Cost-Effectiveness Report' predicted that domestic tourism might reach 600 million trips during the 8-day holiday. Whether so many people will travel is unknown, but for Mid-Autumn, at least returning home for reunion and visiting relatives is quite likely, right?
Will the massive flow of people returning to their hometowns after a long time lead to a surge in gift market sales? Based on this, it seems that the expectation of distributors, brands, and supermarket terminals to 'make up for the missed Spring Festival' might come true?
But what is the actual result? The above has made it clear.
Although the survey mainly covered some cities in the North China market, the data shows that the Mid-Autumn gift box market performance seems not as expected. The sluggish sales of gift box products and the market downturn are the harsh reality we must face.
As the saying goes, 'The annual target depends on Mid-Autumn, and Mid-Autumn success depends on gift boxes.' Starting from Mid-Autumn, the number of festivals and holidays in the second half of the year increases, and gift box products enter the true peak sales season. However, during the double festival coinciding with National Day, the performance of gift box products was below expectations. Does this also imply that the performance in the second half of this year will also be poor?
Perhaps consumption habits vary by region, but in any case, even the downturn in the North China market affects a considerable area. This is caused by the macro environment. Consumption trends are changing, market trends are changing, and the challenges distributors face in the future will inevitably be more severe.
The overall industry performance is under pressure, posing a tough challenge for both brands and distributors. Affected by the pandemic this year, the rise or fall of some categories may not be representative, but it can also reflect the intensifying industry trends.
The changing times have intensified market competition and further tested the strength of industry leaders. This industry reshuffle applies not only to brands but also to distributors. In the current situation, distributors that cannot scale up and achieve high profitability will eventually have their survival space squeezed by increasingly fierce competition.
Some industry experts assert: 'Distributors today that do not operate with data, do not scale up, and do not achieve high profits will ultimately perish.' Various emerging channels and new marketing models are unfriendly to distributors who are inflexible and unable to adapt to the times.
The cold reception of the gift box market this year is partly due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic and partly due to changing consumption trends. The market decline in some regions is already a fact. In such an environment, distributors should better understand market trends, optimize their business structures and strategies, and prepare for the inevitable more intense competition.
Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671