Spring Festival consumption ushered in a ＂good start＂, and the market recovery trend was obvious.
Before the Spring Festival, New Year’s goods sold well all over the country.
Sales of gift box products soared.
The Spring Festival of the Year of the Rabbit is coming, and the streets and shopping malls in the Bay Area are decorated with lanterns and colorful decorations, and there is a festive atmosphere everywhere. It is a traditional custom to catch up with the market and buy new year’s goods during the Spring Festival. During the holiday period, goods such as gift boxes for new year’s goods are selling well, setting off a new peak of consumption, in which the consumption of liquor, beer and wine has all increased partially, showing the scene of "prosperous peak season" again. The "good start" of wine consumption in the Spring Festival consumption season also indicates that this year’s wine consumption may usher in a wave of boost. Under the macro background of expanding consumption, wine as a "link" to promote consumption may be further boosted. Compared with the Spring Festival consumption season in previous years, there have been some obvious changes in the focus of consumers’ purchase of goods and the marketing strategies of businesses.
Spring festival new year’s goods sell well
Sales of gift box products surged 10 times.
Due to the increasing demand for gifts during the Spring Festival, manufacturers have launched some gift box sets, including chocolate gift boxes, nut gift boxes, beverage gift boxes and biscuit cake gift boxes, which occupy the central shelf of Shangchao. Ms. Huang, who lives in Huizhou, Guangdong, bought five boxes of nut gift boxes at one time. She told the reporter of Nanduwan Finance Society that this was mainly for giving gifts to relatives in the New Year. The gift boxes looked high-end and the prices were not expensive.
According to the sales data from JD.COM Hourly Shopping, during the New Year Festival from December 29th, 2022 to January 4th, 2023, the sales of dried meat gift boxes, biscuit gift boxes, liquor gift boxes and low-temperature cooked food gift boxes all increased by more than 10 times last month, while the sales of preserved meat gift boxes, North-South dry goods gift boxes and fruit gift boxes increased by 8 times.
The relevant person in charge of Baicaowei told the reporter of Nanduwan Finance Society that this year’s New Year Festival, Baicaowei was dominated by the "Taste of the Year" series of nut gift boxes in product layout, focusing on the Chinese New Year scene, and Zhu Jingyi, a United Nations Chaoshu artist, launched a joint gift box. Baicaowei’s offline sales of gift boxes in this year’s New Year Festival increased by 248% year-on-year.
Another nut brand () also promoted the nut gift box in the New Year Festival. Its relevant person in charge revealed to the reporter of Nanduwan Finance Society that from December 5, 2022 to January 3, 2023, three squirrels only sold about 220,000 pieces of Dingzi gift box in Tmall flagship store, about 360,000 pieces of forest gift box and about 210,000 pieces of Ruihong gift box. At the same time, in the last two and a half months, the sales of offline channel nut gift boxes increased by about 30% year-on-year.
The monitoring data from the "2023 National Online New Year Festival" conducted by the Ministry of Commerce in conjunction with relevant departments and units also showed that as of the first five days of the "New Year Festival" on January 3, the national online retail sales reached 208 billion yuan, an increase of 4.7% over the previous year. Among them, the sales of new year gift boxes, health and nourishing products and imported fresh food increased rapidly.
Supermarkets set up pre-cooked food counters to cater to gift-giving needs through gift box packaging.
In addition to the seed players such as nuts, candy and biscuits in previous years’ New Year Festival, Nanduwan Caishe visited and saw that the prefabricated dishes that were popular at the C end last year were filled with a number of freezers in some supermarkets this year, and supermarkets specially opened up a prefabricated dish area to facilitate consumers’ centralized purchase. The shopping guide of a supermarket in Guangzhou told the reporter of Nanduwan Caishe that prefabricated dishes such as the Buddha’s Leaping Wall and Huajiao Chicken were the best sellers, which were more suitable for New Year’s Eve or gifts, and items such as Mao Xuewang and boiled beef also sold well.
Some e-commerce platforms have also opened up prefabricated dishes. For example, the fresh e-commerce Pupu Supermarket has opened up a "Little White New Year’s Eve" area, which brings together halogen products, quick-frozen meatballs and Aauto Quicker dishes. Ding-dong also launched the "New Year’s Eve Prefabricated Dishes" reservation area, in which the sales volume of the "Eight Bowls" series of prefabricated dishes featuring hometown flavor exceeded 100,000 copies in just half a month.
Prefabricated dishes launched by some catering brands are also favored by consumers. () Prefabricated dishes, such as Buddha’s Leaping Wall Potted Vegetables, Golden Soup Abalone Chicken, Braised Chicken with Water Fish and so on, are mostly packaged in gift boxes. Nanduwan Caishe reporter learned from an e-commerce platform that some of the gift boxes of Guangzhou Restaurant’s prefabricated dishes have been sold out. The relevant person in charge of Guangzhou Restaurant revealed to the reporter of Nanduwan Caishe that this year’s Spring Festival Guangzhou Restaurant’s potted dishes and other prefabricated dishes were popular and welcomed by consumers.
Xibei Catering Group also launched more than ten gift boxes for Chinese New Year, including pastry gift boxes, pre-cooked food gift boxes, beef and mutton gift boxes, etc. The relevant person in charge of Xibei told the reporter of Nanduwan Finance Society that during the New Year Festival, the sales growth rate of online channels of Xibei related products reached 40% year-on-year, and the overall sales situation was more objective.
Normal temperature milk gift box is popular, and the fluctuation of raw milk cycle after the New Year has attracted much attention.
In addition to nuts and prepared vegetables, on the eve of the Spring Festival, dairy industry is also a kind of product that attracts consumers’ attention.
Nanduwan Caishe reporter learned that this year’s New Year Festival, dairy products sales focus on normal temperature milk gift boxes. Some supermarkets in Guangzhou offline have normal temperature milk for promotion, and the brands involved include Jin Dian, Anmuxi and Telunsu, which mainly belong to Yili and Mengniu, while other brands have not been promoted.
The promotional categories of e-commerce channels are roughly the same as offline. For example, in the JD.COM Gold List on January 16th, the milk and beverage list were sold at normal temperature and milk powder products respectively. On the Tmall channel, the normal temperature milk products were also favored by consumers. In addition, buffalo milk, adult milk powder and goat milk powder were also listed on the Tmall hot list.
Because normal-temperature milk and milk powder have the characteristics of long shelf life, they are more suitable for giving gifts than low-temperature products. Lunar New Year has always been the peak consumption season for dairy products such as milk. This year, with the recovery of visiting relatives and friends or in the future, there will be a wave of small consumption peaks. In terms of capital market performance, dairy stocks including Yili, () and () have a small increase before the Spring Festival.
For the future development of the dairy market, brokers expressed optimism. () The research report believes that for the dairy industry, in addition to the short-term recovery logic, in the medium and long term, the per capita consumption of dairy products in China is significantly lower than that in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, and there is much room for improvement. () It is pointed out that with the opening of the Spring Festival peak season, the demand for dairy products is gradually picking up. Compared with the previous cycle, the leading market share and market position have been further consolidated. The milk price is expected to remain stable in 2023, and the profit rate will benefit from the gradual decline of the original milk end in the medium and long term.
However, while the dairy industry ushered in a wave of consumption in the New Year, raw milk suffered a downward price cycle. According to the data of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in the fourth week of December 2022, the average price of raw milk in 10 provinces including Inner Mongolia and Hebei was 4.12 yuan/kg, down 4.2% year-on-year. In addition, the reporter of Nanduwan Caishe also learned that the price of raw milk per kilogram of some northern pastures has fallen below that of 4 yuan. More importantly, many downstream dairy enterprises have suspended the purchase of raw milk, and some pastures have not received orders.
Returning home and giving gifts are "restarted", and the consumption of drinks is hot.
Since the optimization and adjustment of epidemic prevention and control policies, the traditional consumption season of drinks "New Year’s Day-Spring Festival" has once again "returned".
Among them, the fiery consumption of liquor is an important weather vane for the overall recovery of the liquor market. During the Spring Festival this year, the strong willingness of citizens to return home, the recovery of catering channels and the "return" of the custom of visiting relatives and friends have caused the consumption of liquor to show a warming and fiery phenomenon.
According to a reporter from Nanduwan Caishe, Guangdong’s liquor consumption has shown a "peak season" phenomenon, and after the recovery of catering channels, liquor consumption has been further promoted. In terms of specific visits, Nanduwan Caishe noticed when visiting some supermarkets in Guangzhou years ago that liquor products with 300 yuan price band were the main promotional products of supermarkets. At the national level, Nanduwan Caishe reporters learned from many liquor companies that several key liquor markets, including Beijing, Henan, Shandong and Hunan, showed signs of recovery, especially Maotai-flavor liquor from 300 yuan to 600 yuan, which was more popular with consumers, followed by Luzhou-flavor liquor with the same price.
On the e-commerce platform, liquor consumption is also "hot". Nanduwan Caishe reporter noticed that on the platform of JD.COM New Year Festival, before the festival, ()’ s eighth-generation Puwu’s box (6 bottles of 500ml), single bottle (500ml) and gift box (2 bottles of 500ml) topped the list. The product was a product with a single bottle of more than 1,000 yuan, and then Yanghe Dream Blue M6 and Dream Blue M3 ranked fourth and fifth, which were between 300 and 600 yuan. On the best-selling list of Tmall New Year Festival, the top three are Yanghe Dream Blue M6+, safflower lang Double Bottle Gift Box and 43-degree FCL Feitian Maotai, and their single bottle prices are 804 yuan, 350 yuan and 1155 yuan respectively.
In fact, at present, in terms of liquor consumption structure, products from 300 yuan to 600 yuan are the main varieties of "walking volume". According to some dealers, the opening rate of such products in catering channels is high; However, from the perspective of boosting overall sales, high-end products above 1000 yuan still play a leading role.
In addition to liquor, the consumption of beer and wine has also been boosted during the Spring Festival consumption season. During the online visit to Shangchao, the reporter of Nanduwan Caishe noticed that there were discounts or gift box promotions for high-end products above 10 yuan, including Budweiser, Carlsberg and (); On the e-commerce platform, before the festival, Budweiser was the top three in the Tmall list, and Jianli and Tsingtao beer ranked fourth and fifth; Budweiser, Wusu Beer and Tsingtao Beer rank in the top three in JD.COM.
In terms of wine, when the reporter from Nanduwan Finance Society visited the offline, he learned that there are few promotions in the offline terminal of wine; However, online, domestic wines are favored by consumers, such as Changyu, whose wine products in the "New Year China-2023 JD.COM Supermarket New Year Consumption Trend Report" released by JD.COM Supermarket earlier showed that the sales growth rate of Changyu wine exceeded 50%, which was higher than that of imported wine.
pay close attention
Consumer vouchers drive consumption to double.
Consumption is one of the troikas driving economic growth. The Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2022 pointed out that efforts should be made to expand domestic demand. We should give priority to restoring and expanding consumption. Enhance consumption capacity, improve consumption conditions and innovate consumption scenarios. Increase the income of urban and rural residents through multiple channels, and support consumption such as housing improvement, new energy vehicles, and old-age services. Subsequently, the Outline of the Strategic Plan for Expanding Domestic Demand (2022-2035) and the Implementation Plan of the Strategy for Expanding Domestic Demand in the Tenth Five-Year Plan were published, both of which emphasized the great significance of consumption in expanding domestic demand.
In order to promote the recovery of the consumer market, a large number of coupons have been issued. On January 15th, Luohu District and Nanshan District of Shenzhen issued a total of 100 million yuan of coupons, covering catering, cultural tourism, accommodation, car purchase, retail and other consumer fields; On January 11th, Tianjin launched the "Tianjin Tesco" coupon distribution activity, and it is estimated that 115 million yuan will be distributed. In addition, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Yantai and other places have also joined. There is no doubt that coupons can promote consumption. Take Guangdong Province as an example. By September 21, 2022, the province had written off about 1.13 billion yuan of consumer vouchers, which directly boosted consumption by about 10 billion yuan.
At the same time, the share price of consumer concept stocks in the secondary market keeps rising, and the New Year Festival before the Spring Festival set off the first consumption boom in the New Year, further boosting the rise of consumer concept stocks. In the first 10 trading days of 2023, the food and beverage sector index continued to rise, with a cumulative increase of more than 9%.
The concentration of alcohol consumption may be further improved.
Since the optimization and adjustment of epidemic prevention and control strategy in COVID-19 at the end of last year, "promoting consumption and restoring economy" has become the main theme of this year, and the wine industry is expected to achieve great development.
According to the reporter of Nanduwan Caishe, the wine industry has a "strong binding" role in stimulating consumption and domestic demand. Therefore, under the background of promoting consumption, wine is not only a link to promote consumption, but also a beneficiary of promoting consumption, which may be greatly boosted this year.
On the regional level, a big province of wine consumption may become the "vanguard" to stimulate industry consumption, among which the Guangdong market may play a leading role this year. Peng Hong, president of Guangdong Liquor Industry Association, had predicted to the reporter of Nanduwan Finance Society that although the overall liquor market in Guangdong declined compared with last year, the decline of famous wines was not significant, and the sales of Guangdong local liquor, the food ration wine of Guangdong people, rose against the trend. With a good consumption base and a policy bonus to expand consumption, "it is expected that with the continuous recovery of catering scenes and the gradual recovery of conference activities, Guangdong’s alcohol consumption will surely usher in a leap-forward recovery."
Although the rapid development of the wine industry has become the industry’s cognition and expectation, from the overall trend, the trend of "production decline and performance increase" and "concentration to the head" has not changed much.
Nanduwan Caishe reporter learned from the data of the National Bureau of Statistics that from January to November 2022, the cumulative output of liquor was 5.973 million kiloliters, down 4.7% year-on-year, and the output of beer was 33.123 million kiloliters, up 0.5% year-on-year. While the output data dropped, the head liquor enterprises including (), Wuliangye and (), as well as the head beer enterprises such as China Resources Beer, Tsingtao Beer and (), achieved record highs. According to the industry, the "stock game" era of liquor industry continues to deepen, and the "high-end" of liquor industry intensifies, and national liquor enterprises will further "eat away" the market of local liquor enterprises; The beer industry sinks high-end products to channels below line 3 through sinking channels.
Of course, in the case of a "good start" of the Spring Festival in the liquor industry, some people in the industry have also raised some concerns, especially in the liquor industry, which was found to have a high channel inventory last year. Even though the sales during the Spring Festival consumption season are hot, it will take time to repair it. Xiao Zhuqing, an expert in liquor industry, said in an interview with the media that due to the high inventory pressure of dealers, the market may still focus on digesting inventory. "Under the background of economic recovery and expected improvement in the market, it is expected that the liquor industry will return to normal after the Mid-Autumn Festival this year."
It is expected that the Lantern Festival will usher in a comprehensive recovery period.
The consumption in the Spring Festival is booming, while the coupons incite the consumption to increase exponentially, and the consumer market continues to recover. Lin Yue, chief management analyst of Lingyan Consulting, expressed optimism about this year’s consumer market. He told the reporter of Nanduwan Finance Society that overall, after the epidemic was released, citizens’ consumption enthusiasm increased greatly, and even tourism, catering and entertainment had opportunities for retaliatory consumption.
Cheng Gang, secretary-general of Guangdong Catering Service Industry Association, told Nanduwan Caishe reporter that before the Spring Festival, the consumer market ushered in a rebound period, and the sales situation of individual enterprises may be better than that of the same period last year, which is mainly the amplification of retaliatory consumption, but the whole consumer market has not yet reached the stage of full recovery. After the Lantern Festival, after migrant workers return to work and resume work in an all-round way, the entire consumer market will usher in a comprehensive recovery period, even if there may be a rebound in the epidemic, but the cycle will not be too long.
Based on this, Cheng Gang believes that the government, enterprises and industry associations should make preparations in advance. The government can introduce relevant policies, such as increasing the number of trips to return home, allowing a large number of migrant workers to return, and issuing more consumption red envelopes to promote consumption. Enterprises should operate more finely, cultivate internal strength, make good products and provide more refined services to consumers. Trade associations should mobilize all kinds of social resources and media resources to enhance consumption.
change
Merchants: more prominent health and nutrition
Compared with previous years, there have been some obvious changes in consumers’ concerns and merchants’ marketing strategies in buying new year’s goods.
First of all, when selling new year’s goods, merchants pay more attention to the labels of health and nutrition, which is mainly to cater to the current consumers’ concern about food safety. The ingredients and ingredients list have become an important element for consumers to consider when buying food.
Leisure snack brands are emphasizing health. For example, three squirrels added "a handful of nuts a day is good for health" to the outer packaging of this year’s nut gift box. The person in charge of the brand revealed that this is to promote the mind of healthy eating nuts. Herb flavor this year’s New Year’s Festival mainly promotes the product "Benwei Zhenguo" nuts. In addition to being imported from the global core producing areas, the raw materials are specially selected with less added clean formula.
Ding Dong, a fresh e-commerce platform, is also aware of this change of consumers. In the past year, Ding Dong has expanded the "clean label" products with the standard of "unnecessary non-addition/less addition", and screened more SKUs that can reduce the food burden for segmented users. According to the person in charge of Ding Dong’s grocery shopping, in the fourth quarter of 2022, the sales volume of products such as 0 sugar/low sugar, 0 fat/low fat, low sodium, low GI, low calorie, salad, high protein and clean label on the platform increased by 8 times year-on-year.
Consumers: Pay attention to cost performance and consume more rationally.
Secondly, consumers are paying more and more attention to cost performance, while high-end consumption is gradually recovering. According to the "2023 New Year Consumption Report" released by JD.COM Institute of Consumption and Industrial Development, 78.7% of the respondents indicated that they would prefer not to buy more and have enough this year, and 36.6% of the respondents indicated that they would give priority to cost performance and practicality; 28.2% of consumers said that they would consider factors such as quality, service and after-sales besides price, which to some extent reflected consumers’ rational consumption tendency and their pursuit of high-quality and cost-effective products.
However, Lin Yue, an analyst of Lingyan Consulting Management, pointed out in an interview with Nanduwan Caishe that the rationality of consumption is affected by the epidemic to a certain extent. Once the economy grows rapidly, the consumption in the middle and high end will also recover simultaneously. However, the popular head brands in the market will be popularized, and this trend will continue, which will put a lot of pressure on the third-and fourth-line brands.
In addition to health and cost performance, consumers’ pursuit of convenience is becoming more and more obvious. The sales situation of JD.COM Hourly Shopping shows that from December 29th, 2022 to January 4th, 2023, the order sales of JD.COM Hourly Shopping New Year Festival increased by nearly 70% year-on-year.
Consumers’ pursuit of convenience has appeared in the past year. According to the China Shoppers Report 2022 released by Bain Company, the performance efficiency of traditional e-commerce platforms has declined due to the epidemic, and O2O platforms such as community convenience stores, community supermarkets, instant supermarkets, fresh e-commerce and community group purchases have become new choices for consumers. In the first three quarters of 2022, the number of consumers in O2O channels increased by 6.1% and the shopping frequency increased by 14.6%.
Writing and photography: reporter Zhan Danqing Beibei from Nanduwan Finance Society