---
title: "Insights into China's Consumer Market"
description: "Accenture's latest report on China's consumer market identifies five new consumerist trends driven by digital technology, including dual-channel purchasing, social shopping, experience-centric consumption, fitness consumption, and embracing the value economy. The report also highlights the significant purchasing power contributed by digital side jobs, internet finance, and mobile payments, as well as opportunities in the post-95s and silver-haired segments."
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published: "2018-06-10"
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# Insights into China's Consumer Market

> Accenture's latest report on China's consumer market identifies five new consumerist trends driven by digital technology, including dual-channel purchasing, social shopping, experience-centric consumption, fitness consumption, and embracing the value economy. The report also highlights the significant purchasing power contributed by digital side jobs, internet finance, and mobile payments, as well as opportunities in the post-95s and silver-haired segments.

Recently, Accenture released a major report on China's consumer market, following its previous "China Consumer Market Insights Report" four years ago.
The report points out that against the backdrop of consumption upgrading four years ago, with the accelerated iteration of digital technology, five new consumerist characteristics have emerged. Accenture summarizes them as:
01. Dual-channel purchasing
Online or offline? For retailers, these two binary opposition questions were once the ultimate challenge of survival. Now, the two are gradually forming a balance, moving from opposition to integration.
Accenture's research found that 55% of consumers have increased their online shopping frequency recently, but these active online shoppers are also active offline consumers. These people often use their phones in physical stores to search for online information, but not to seek lower prices; instead, they compare various aspects of products to be "smart consumers."
The concept that "time cost is also money" is gradually gaining popularity. More than half of consumers believe it is worth spending money to save time, and 71% of them hope to save more time on information searching and price comparison.
02. Social shopping
Rather than saying life is elsewhere, it is better to say Chinese consumers live in their friends' social circles.
Chinese consumers trust word-of-mouth from friends above all else. Recommendations and shares on WeChat stimulate the curiosity and purchase desire of friends watching (previously, Tiaoxi E-commerce also analyzed that WeChat contributes 400 billion yuan in sales to Taobao every year).
According to Accenture's research, nearly 90% of consumers have their own interest circles, with food, travel, and fitness being the most common. Interest circles have a considerable influence on consumer purchasing behavior. Most consumers say they are more willing to trust and buy products recommended in their interest circles, even if the price is higher.
In addition, this "circle economy" has a characteristic: "the more you share, the more impulsive, the more you love to buy."
87% of consumers are willing to share shopping experiences or leave comments, and 55% of them share their shopping on social applications. These consumers are more susceptible to the influence and stimulation of social sharing, thereby increasing impulse purchases, resulting in a cyclical chain reaction of "purchase-share-repurchase."
03. Experience first
Chinese consumers are not only buying products but also shopping experiences. In the past two years, providing consumers with "smart shopping experiences" (such as scenario-based experiences and participatory purchasing experiences) has been a major opportunity.
The survey shows that 57% of consumers have purchased or are interested in purchasing virtual reality or augmented reality products; among them, 45% hope to experience products they want to buy through VR/AR devices.
In this regard, companies need to invest in technologies that enhance such "smart shopping" experiences in advance, and also upgrade their marketing simultaneously.
"Participation" is also part of the shopping experience. From consumer feedback, participatory shopping brings very positive effects, most notably helping consumers find the most suitable products and brands. A typical successful case is Jiangxiaobai.
In the second quarter of 2016, Jiangxiaobai launched the "Expression Bottle" product, where consumers could upload text and images to automatically generate their own unique bottle. If the expression content was selected, it could be mass-produced and launched nationwide. This move received positive support from consumers. Within less than half a year of the product's launch, year-on-year sales increased by 86%, and the search index and e-commerce 2C sales growth exceeded 100%.
04. Fitness consumption
Exercise and fitness are becoming the latest lifestyle for Chinese people, and they are nurturing a huge consumer market—exercising and consuming is becoming a new trend in China.
Fitness enthusiasts who exercise more than 5 hours a week and "circle exercisers" who are active in sports social circles are the main force of sports consumption. They have high budgets for purchasing sports products and fitness. If they are both fitness enthusiasts and circle exercisers, their purchasing power is even stronger.
In addition, "sports + new technology" is gradually becoming an expected combination for sports consumers. 44% of consumers expressed hope that AR/VR technology would be applied to the fitness field, and 41% hope that artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things would be widely used in fitness assistance.
05. Embracing the value economy
This is an era of consumption impulse, but also an era of consumption reflection.
Increased income and consumption convenience provide fertile ground for impulse consumption, but also bring an increase in idle items. Nearly half of consumers say that many products become rarely used after a period of time.
Therefore, more and more consumers hope that items can be used more valuably and reasonably, such as circulating idle items through second-hand trading platforms (Accenture's research shows that over 60% of consumers have used second-hand trading platforms. Xianyu, established in 2016, currently has 16 million active sellers, surpassing Taobao), and consuming goods through sharing rather than purchasing. The products with the strongest sharing demand include books/audio, sports goods, kitchen supplies, digital products, etc.
This means that these areas may give rise to sharing economy models no less than transportation.
In addition, Accenture's report also found that in China's new household consumption in 2017, the three major drivers—diversified income from "digital side jobs," internet finance, and mobile payments—contributed at least 300 billion yuan in purchasing power, accounting for 9% of overall new consumption, and are three new blue oceans in the consumer market segments.
**Among the sub-segments, the post-95s and the silver-haired generation deserve special attention, and consumption areas targeting them are full of opportunities.**
Source: Accenture
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