According to JD’s big data report on the 2019 Spring Festival Shopping Fair, food and beverages is one of the biggest categories Chinese consumers look to buy. This year food and beverage ranks first in overall sales, followed by mobile phones and then fashion.
2019 was also a big year for imports in China. Sales of imported products increased by 64% year-in-year during the Spring Festival period as international brands become options for more and more Chinese consumers. And just like overall sales share, food and beverage products represent the top category among foreign products. Mom & baby care, personal care, fresh food and alcohol round out the top five import categories in sales.
In other words, brands should be well prepared to capture the opportunity the Spring Festival Shopping Fair presents and be ready to break into the leader board in category and product sales.
According to the report’s findings, the two key areas retailers and brands must optimize to capitalize on Spring Festival sales are product availability and launch effective promotional campaigns to attract customers’ attention.
In Edge by Ascential™’s report, 2019 Spring Festival Shopping Fair-Digital Shelf Performance, we used Edge by Ascential Digital Shelf data harvested from Jan 7th to Feb 3rd, covering 836 brands and over 50,000 SKUs. We focused on availability and pricing to evaluate the performance of retailers and product categories. Here are some key findings:
Retailers and brands have room to improve on their product availability during the Spring Festival Shopping Fair.
- JD, TMALL and YHD outperformed Suning and Amazon, with overall product availability rates of over 70%
- Nonetheless, availability was an issue for all retailers; each retailer had at least 20% of listings with availability issues
- Within the food & beverage category, the availability of blended oil increased by 29% compared with that before Spring Festival Shopping Fair while the availability of juice, tea and water all decreased by at least 10%.
Survey pricing across your category before you determine your own brand’s Spring Festival Shopping Fair pricing strategy. Prices fluctuated heavily as and retailers launched promotional campaigns during the Spring Festival shopping period.
- Amazon and YHD had more products drop in price, with 39% and 35% discount SKUs respectively.
- Beer, wine and spirits, home DIY & improvement and consumer electronics were the three categories with the most reduced-price listings (with over 35% discount SKUs).
- In food & beverages, chocolates saw the steepest price drop, with discounts of up to 60%, while biscuits, coffee and water all saw discounts exceeding 30%.
If you’re interested in learning how Edge by Ascential can help optimize your digital shelf performance, please contact our consultant team at edge.apac@ascentialedge.com and +86 21 52993930 ext 812.
