Electrical Equipment / Components & Telecoms

In 2022, China's online retail market will grow steadily. According to customs data, the national online retail sales in 2022 will reach 13.79 trillion yuan, up 4% year on year. Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods reached 11.96 trillion yuan, up 6.2% year on year, accounting for 27.2% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods.

"Under the background of multiple pressures such as the impact of the epidemic and the economic downturn on the entire consumer-side demand, the online retail business as a whole has maintained sufficient growth resilience, and has made positive contributions to meet consumer demand and boost the stable production and supply of the consumer industry chain in the most serious period of the epidemic," said Chen Jia, a researcher at the International Monetary Research Institute of Renmin University of China.

Many highlights of online consumption

54737.9 yuan -- Xiao Xin showed her Alipay bill last year to the International Business Daily reporter. Among them, beauty salons, mother and baby parents and children, and clothes and costumes ranked top three. "In the past two years, most of our daily necessities were purchased online and delivered directly to our home by express, especially during the epidemic prevention and control period, which greatly reduced contact consumption," Xiao Xin said.

There are many consumers with similar shopping habits to Xiao Xin. In recent years, online shopping has almost covered all aspects of people's lives. With the gradual enlargement and continuous development of the advantages of e-commerce such as complete sales categories and convenient logistics, consumers' dependence on online shopping has deepened.

When introducing the development of online retail market in 2022, the head of the Department of Electronic Commerce of the Ministry of Commerce said that the monitoring of key e-commerce platforms by business big data showed that the national online retail market in 2022 was mainly characterized by four characteristics: first, the sales of some commodity categories achieved double-digit growth. Among the 18 categories of monitored commodities, the sales growth of 8 categories of commodities exceeded double digits. Second, the growth rate in Northeast and Central China is fast. Online retail sales in Northeast and Central China increased by 13.2% and 8.7% respectively year on year, 9.2 and 4.7 percentage points higher than the national growth rate. Third, the growth of online retail sales of agricultural products is good. According to customs data, the national rural online retail sales reached 2.17 trillion yuan, up 3.6% year on year. Fourth, cross-border e-commerce has developed rapidly. According to customs data, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export (including B2B) will be 2.11 trillion yuan in 2022, up 9.8% year on year.

In addition, the new business forms and models of e-commerce also fully demonstrate vitality. According to the above person in charge, the key monitoring e-commerce platforms have accumulated more than 120 million live broadcasts, more than 1.1 trillion people watching, more than 95 million live products, and nearly 1.1 million active anchors.

According to customs data, in 2022, there will be new anchors on the top echelon: in June, Dong Yuhui "sealed the gods in the first battle", and the East quickly "went out of the circle"; At the end of the year, Zhang Lan and Chen Lan became popular and began to compete for the position of "Tiktok First Sister"

According to customs data, it is estimated that the GMV of live broadcast e-commerce will be around 3.5 trillion yuan in 2022, accounting for 23% of the total retail sales of e-commerce.

At the same time, instant retail, as a new form and mode of e-commerce, is also gradually releasing its charm: the penetration of industries and categories continues to expand, covering more application scenarios, and accelerating the arrival of everything. From fruit, catering, daily necessities, to medicine and even clothing, "online order, 30 minutes delivery" has gradually become the shopping norm of consumers.

Grasp the general trend and advance

"From the perspective of trend, although the growth rate of online retail sales is decreasing year by year compared with the previous years, its growth rate is still higher than the growth rate of the total retail sales of consumer goods in the whole society. It is expected that the proportion of online retail sales of physical goods will gradually increase in the future." said Lai Yang, member of the expert committee of the China Federation of Commerce and chief expert of the Beijing International Trade Center Research Base.

Looking ahead, industry experts believe that China's online retail industry needs to seize opportunities and meet challenges to maintain high-quality development.

Chen Jia said, first of all, the pattern of online retail industry needs to be further optimized and the retail model needs to be further innovated. Under the continuous and precise regulation of the policy on the healthy development of the platform economy, the online retail industry is expected to rely on technological innovation and take advantage of the rebound in consumer demand to optimize the industry structure and lay a solid foundation for high-quality development. Secondly, the online retail industry must attach great importance to technological progress and constantly improve its core competitiveness. Analyzed from the trend of the global online retail industry, online retail enterprises are increasing their layout in the new generation of interactive application scenarios such as AI, VR, AR, and metauniverse, in order to seize the market share of online consumption.

In addition, "In the future, the online retail industry should also pay attention to the general trend of economic development and the objective laws. With the deepening of the new technological revolution in the consumer industry chain, the online retail industry is increasingly dependent on customer stickiness. Major platforms and brands need to constantly improve the online service level, sink the market to the county and rural areas, continue to launch localized products, and enhance customer stickiness." Chen Jia said.