---
title: "In the Midst of Major Shifts in the Maternal and Infant Industry, Growth Remains the Overriding Goal"
description: "The essence of the FMCG economy is population economics, which is particularly evident in the maternal and infant industry. Births in China fell from 17.86 million in 2016 to 9.02 million in 2023, halving in just eight years, leading to declining birth rates, shrinking market size, and demand divergence. At the 2024 Parenting Festival Industry Summit hosted by Taobao Tmall, the focus was on achieving growth in this challenging environment, with the platform sharing insights on consumer trends and channel shifts."
author: "陈文石"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2024-04-11"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/jyh6F4e4LP59wGgNNd3tbg"
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---

# In the Midst of Major Shifts in the Maternal and Infant Industry, Growth Remains the Overriding Goal

> The essence of the FMCG economy is population economics, which is particularly evident in the maternal and infant industry. Births in China fell from 17.86 million in 2016 to 9.02 million in 2023, halving in just eight years, leading to declining birth rates, shrinking market size, and demand divergence. At the 2024 Parenting Festival Industry Summit hosted by Taobao Tmall, the focus was on achieving growth in this challenging environment, with the platform sharing insights on consumer trends and channel shifts.

The essence of the FMCG economy is population economics, and this is especially pronounced in the maternal and infant industry.
One fact we observe is that over the past decade, the maternal and infant industry has been the sector in FMCG facing the greatest pressure, challenges, and changes—bar none.
In 2016, China's birth population was 17.86 million; by 2023, that number had dropped to 9.02 million. In just eight years, the birth population halved. Clearly, declining birth rates, shrinking industry volume, and demand divergence have become the most prominent characteristics of the maternal and infant industry.
At this point, where will growth come from? Is growth still possible, and how can it be achieved? Every practitioner in the maternal and infant industry is seeking answers to these questions.
**On April 11, Taobao Tmall Maternal, Infant, and Parenting Industry held the **「2024 Parenting Festival Industry Summit」** in Hangzhou. As the largest super IP event in the maternal and infant industry, the Parenting Festival has been held for six consecutive years. At this year's summit, the 「Parenting Awards」 were also presented, and an online promotional event was held from April 17-20.
In terms of influence, Taobao's Parenting Festival is not just a large-scale maternal and infant consumption event, but also an opportunity to observe industry changes, consumption trends, new business developments, and industry challenges and opportunities.
**Li Sa, General Manager of Taobao Tmall Maternal, Infant, and Parenting Industry, stated, "In 2024, we will focus on merchants' long-term business growth, starting from user value, leading consumer mindset, and focusing on brand growth. 'Growth' is the top goal for the maternal and infant industry in 2024."**
**Viewing Maternal and Infant Industry from Taotian Data**
**New Changes in Consumption and Channels**
In 2023, despite a negative population trend, the number of merchants continued to grow, making "involution" (fierce competition) an inevitable and prominent competitive characteristic in the maternal and infant industry.
But even with involution, **how to compete with quality and achieve growth?** remains an important topic.
**From the consumer side**, due to the continuous decline in birth population, maternal and infant consumption is showing characteristics such as overall volume decline, price increases, and demand divergence.
**From the channel side**, maternal and infant sales channels are becoming more specialized and chain-operated offline, with a trend of shifting from offline to online. However, regardless of offline or online channels, overall concentration is moving toward advantageous channels and leading platforms.
In the overall market environment, in 2023, Taotian Maternal and Infant achieved two important growths:
The Taobao/Tmall maternal and infant user base grew rapidly, surpassing 300 million, a year-on-year increase of over 20%; the penetration rate of 88VIP users among the 300 million maternal and infant users increased from 8% to 10%.
**The first growth means that more and more users are choosing to purchase maternal and infant products on Taobao and Tmall.**
**The second growth means that among high-value users (88VIP) on the Taobao system, more and more people are also choosing to purchase maternal and infant products on Taobao and Tmall.**
These two growths are extraordinary.
They indicate that Taobao Tmall has made many important judgments correctly regarding maternal and infant consumption trends, and has made the most appropriate responses and changes accordingly, enabling users and consumption to gather more toward it.
These judgments and responses are extremely important for the entire maternal and infant industry, and the answers to how to achieve growth in an era of shrinking volume are also contained within them.
At this year's Parenting Festival Summit, Taotian also shared the latest **maternal and infant consumption research report**.
This report included an online survey sample of 1,562 people and offline discussion groups involving 72 people across multiple cities. The report shows that the behavior of Chinese maternal and infant consumers has undergone fundamental changes and divergence, and compared with consumption a decade or four to five years ago, there has been a huge shift in the times.
**First, a huge change in parenting concepts.** Among the new generation of post-90s parents, encouraging, equal, and democratic parenting concepts have become mainstream, with more parents hoping to grow together with their children and be friends with them.
This change will trigger continuous changes in maternal and infant consumption. For example, in this generation of families, children will have a say in consumption decisions at an increasingly younger age, and their influence will grow. This is completely different from the past.
**Second, a huge change in consumer psychology.** Among the 60s/70s generation of parents, there was often "unlimited satisfaction" in children's consumption, but among the new generation of parents, maternal and infant consumption is characterized by "rationality," with purchase decisions beginning to focus on suitability and practicality.
**Third, parents' attention to all aspects of their children remains high, which is a tradition of the Chinese nation.** However, among all concerns, children's physical and mental health ranks first and second. In first- and second-tier cities, parents' attention to children's physical and mental health is significantly higher.
This means that in addition to traditional children's education-related products, categories beneficial to children's physical and mental health will continue to expand and grow rapidly in the future, such as nutritional supplements and children's growth milk powder.
**Fourth, during the parenting process, mothers have a huge need for self-pleasing, and fathers are more willing to participate in child-rearing.**
This is a significant difference between post-90s parents and those of the past. This change can guide brand owners in the maternal and infant industry in effective innovation directions in product development, consumption scenario creation, and brand communication.
**Why Has Taobao Tmall Become**
**the Main Arena for Maternal and Infant Consumption in China?**
Taobao Tmall has become one of the main arenas for maternal and infant consumption in China.
Data shows that in 2023, on the Taobao Tmall platform, there were 10 brands with sales exceeding 1 billion yuan, 257 brands exceeding 100 million yuan, and 1,882 brands exceeding 10 million yuan. At the product level, there were 9 super single products exceeding 100 million yuan and 1,073 major single products exceeding 10 million yuan.
Where does brand growth come from? The first and most important thing is to **embrace growing channels and platforms. Only on growing platforms can one maximize the possibility of achieving one's own growth.**
In a less optimistic macro environment, why has Taobao Tmall become a rapidly growing main arena for maternal and infant consumption? From the speech by Li Sa, General Manager of Taobao Tmall Maternal, Infant, and Parenting Industry, at the summit, we have attempted to summarize the following growth methodology of Taotian Maternal and Infant.
The sustained growth of Taotian Maternal and Infant is actually the creation of a growth system centered on **"user insight, product reshaping, and scenario marketing"**.
An important action of Taotian Maternal and Infant is **"optimizing supply, improving efficiency in people and goods operations"**. By seeking high-quality brand partners in the industry chain, it builds a system centered on the maternal and infant population.
This product system covers the full cycle from pregnancy to all parenting stages for ages 0-12, involving 9 major categories: "pregnancy and childbirth, children's clothing & shoes, infant and toddler care and supplies, infant and toddler milk powder and food, infant and toddler diapers, stationery and electronic education." Taotian Maternal and Infant has, in fact, become a one-stop professional platform for parents' full-cycle parenting.
Under the platform product structure of full cycle and 9 major categories, Taotian Maternal and Infant also helps brand owners build a scientific product echelon. It focuses on the five dimensions of **"super single products, price-competitive product portfolios, new products, trend products, and absolute cost-performance product portfolios"** to build merchants' core product competitiveness.
At the same time, for different products, Taotian Maternal and Infant, together with merchants, uses different strategies and resources to create a healthy product structure covering traffic generation, transaction and repurchase, and profit.
In addition to deep user insight and full-cycle product system development, **"scenario-based marketing"** is a growth weapon that Taotian Maternal and Infant provides to merchants.
Centered on user decision-making and purchase paths, it uses multi-platform content seeding across the entire web outside the platform to first occupy consumer minds; then it drives traffic to the platform, relying on various content marketing methods such as celebrity live streaming/store live streaming for conversion and monetization. It works with merchants to promote, allowing a steady stream of new customers to flow into Taotian Maternal and Infant merchants and convert; through high-quality products and attractive activities, it encourages repurchase, turning more new customers into repeat customers and upgrading them to high-value customers.
Starting from user insight, building a full-cycle high-quality maternal and infant product supply chain, and achieving sustained growth through scenario-based marketing—this is the growth path that the Taotian Maternal and Infant platform has created for merchants, and it is also another expression of Taotian Maternal and Infant's **"focus on merchants' long-term business growth, starting from user value, leading consumer mindset, and focusing on brand growth"**.
**Challenges and Opportunities**
**Under the Major Shifts in the Maternal and Infant Industry**
The entire maternal and infant industry must establish a correct long-term understanding: the downward trend in birth population will continue, the rate of decline will slow, and there may be rebounds, but there will be no reversal.
Simple, extensive growth strategies based on population growth have become ineffective. The biggest challenge and also the biggest opportunity lies in finding a path to sustained and quality growth in an era of shrinking volume.
> **First, recognize the changing trends in maternal and infant consumption and find the patterns and opportunities behind consumption divergence.**
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> **Second, recognize the channel change trend of sustained online growth and the integration of online and offline, find opportunities within it, and cultivate one's own online operational capabilities.**
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> **Third, recognize the sales concentration trend behind consumption divergence, embrace all growth channels, especially the main growth arenas. Quickly learn and master platform rules, apply them, focus investment, respond to changes with changes, and leverage momentum for rapid growth.**
By grasping the platform direction and following the trend, brands will be closer to sustainable operations in the long run.


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