Under the situation that the impact of covid-19 pneumonia continues to deepen and sporadic cases are distributed in many places, China’s consumer market still needs to be further recovered. According to the data released on the official website of the National Bureau of statistics, the total retail sales of social consumer goods in 2021 was 44082.3 billion yuan, an increase of 12.5% over the previous year and an average growth rate of 3.9% in the two years; The Research Report of relevant think tanks also shows that the development growth rate of e-commerce industry continues to decline in 2020 and 2021. Industry insiders believe that the new consumption formats represented by online retail, especially e-commerce live broadcasting, continue to maintain a good growth momentum, which is a bright spot worthy of attention.
the development of e-commerce has entered the stage of stock competition, and there are still structural opportunities
Despite the vigorous development of cross-border e-commerce and other fields under the epidemic, China’s e-commerce industry is still inevitably facing some development pressure.
Orient Securities Company Limited(600958) relevant research reports pointed out that in December 2021, the e-commerce industry showed a trend of both volume and price decline. According to the calculation, the year-on-year growth rate of online retail sales of physical goods in December was 1.4% (down 3 percentage points month on month), which was lower than the overall level of social zero for the first time in history.
Orient Securities Company Limited(600958) analyst Xiang Wenqian pointed out that, on the one hand, according to the express data disclosed by the State Post Office, the number of express tickets increased by 10.7% year-on-year in December (the quarterly revenue growth rate decreased by 5.8 percentage points), corresponding to the year-on-year decrease of 8.0% in e-commerce ASP (the quarterly revenue growth rate increased by 0.2 percentage points), and the double drop in electricity prices led to the downturn of online growth in that month; On the other hand, in terms of categories, due to the significant siphon effect of “double 11”, some optional categories performed weakly in December, which dragged down the overall online growth in December.
According to the relevant research report of Anxin securities, among the top enterprises, Alibaba’s revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2022 increased by 11% year-on-year to 244.6 billion yuan, about 3% lower than the market expectation. This is mainly affected by the weak performance of e-commerce business due to the low consumption and business support policies.
According to Li Chengdong, founder of dolphin club, there are two major bottlenecks in the current development of e-commerce industry: first, the scale of online shopping users is declining, and the growth rate fell to about 3% in 2021, with about 812 million at present. Objectively, there is a phenomenon that incremental users have priority and the purchasing power of users in the sinking market is weak; Second, the online penetration of most categories such as clothing, cosmetics and home appliances 3C has been close to or more than 50%, and only a few categories such as FMCG and fresh food have room.
“Judging from the cumulative growth of the whole year, it is only a matter of time before the growth of online retail sales of physical goods falls below double digits. This means that China’s e-commerce industry has come to an inflection point of development.” Li Chengdong said.
However, in the view of insiders, although the consumption environment has been affected, opportunities still exist under the “cold winter”. Structurally, the new consumption formats represented by online retail, especially e-commerce live broadcasting, continue to maintain a good growth momentum, which is a bright spot worthy of attention.
Zhu Xiaohu, partner of Jinshajiang venture capital, said that at present, there are many “bright” brands in China’s consumer market, such as quick-frozen coffee, bubble water and self-made small hot pot, but they can’t “eat fresh all over the world” and need the brand to continue to grasp the user’s needs and cultivate their repurchase intention; At the same time, China’s offline catering chain trend has just begun. Entrepreneurs need to explore new and standardized chain catering category opportunities, and contribute new opportunities to China’s consumer market while sharing development dividends.
Peng Jinwei, partner of Challenger capital, also pointed out that at a time when consumption in real estate and other fields is dragged down, more and more people begin to invest their disposable income in categories that can please themselves, especially in areas such as clothing, food, housing and transportation. There is still a lot of growth space in the future, which is expected to further promote consumption upgrading.
the e-commerce live broadcasting industry has performed well. The industry suggests accelerating the cultivation of standardized head enterprises
Data show that as of September 2021, the number of tiktok service providers increased by 112% compared with the beginning of the year, and the service brand grew by 150% over the beginning of the year. Many insiders pointed out that the live broadcast e-commerce industry still has great growth space, and its potential should be further tapped on the basis of standardized development.
Li Chengdong pointed out that although the global retail data in the past two years are not satisfactory, the global e-commerce industry has developed rapidly, indicating that opportunities still exist. In the Chinese market, the government has strengthened the supervision of big data ripening, antitrust and paying taxes according to law. The underlying logic of these actions is to protect consumers, small and medium-sized businesses, enterprise employees and information security. “In the past, there was no government intervention in the Internet industry, and most of them were bad money to expel good money. In the current situation, there has been an alternating reshuffle of brands, which contains a lot of opportunities.”
“The flow bonus can only be eaten for one or two years. If the brand wants long-term development, it must establish product advantages. There are two main measurement indicators: one is the active repurchase rate of users, and the other is whether it can maintain a sustained and stable gross profit margin.” Zhu Xiaohu said that “generation Z” consumers have gradually stepped onto the stage, giving a large number of enterprises the opportunity to redefine categories. How to strengthen brand innovation on the basis of making full use of new formats such as live e-commerce needs to be considered.
Shen Yongming, vice chairman of Shanghai Minhang District CPPCC and Secretary General of the municipal Party committee of China democratic construction, said that with the continuous growth of the scale of the live e-commerce industry and the maturity of users’ cognition, participants of live e-commerce need to change from the thinking of short-term traffic harvesting and begin to pay attention to strengthening the ability of content, selection, quality control, supply chain and service, Create a truly professional and efficient live shopping channel and establish a “live studio brand” with a long-term thinking.
\u3000\u3000 “The healthy development of live broadcasting e-commerce requires efforts and joint governance. The first standardization of head organizations will play an exemplary role in the industry. For the heads and live broadcasting organizations of relevant active industries, the relevant departments should adjust their policies, formulate high standards of access threshold and employment requirements, and issue a series of corresponding reward and punishment measures to form a long-term mechanism and guarantee them according to law Live broadcast of the legitimate rights and interests of practitioners in the e-commerce industry. ” Shen Yongming said.
