E-commerce, live-streaming help drive recovery in China’s retail scene amid coronavirus slump
- Online sales of physical goods surged 36.3 per cent year-on-year during the Labour Day holiday in China
- Total retail sales of consumer goods fell by 20.5 per cent year-on-year nominally in the first two months of the year
“The epidemic has given rise to increasing interest in new types of consumption such as online grocery shopping, online education and telemedicine,” said vice-minister for commerce Wang Bingnan at the briefing.
Live-streaming, in particular, has become a “hot trend” in e-commerce, according to Wang. The number of live-streamed online sales campaigns doubled during the five-day national holiday that ended on Tuesday, with some events recording sales of as much as 140 million yuan (US$19.8 million), Wang said.
He added that the volume of sales from live-streams over the holiday this year was 4.7 times of that from the same period last year.
Shanghai shopping festival sees US$2.2 billion of sales in first 24 hours
Still, with the strong online sales over the long weekend, Wang said he expects e-commerce to “play a vital role” in alleviating the impact of the pandemic and drive the recovery of China’s retail sector.
Over the Labour Day holiday, automobile sales in Shanghai, Chongqing, and Zhejiang increased by 49.6 per cent, 28.5 per cent and 8.8 per cent respectively year-on-year, Wang said, citing figures from key companies. He added that sales of home appliances on some e-commerce platforms doubled year-on-year.
“To sustain their business, department stores and shopping malls have to accelerate the ongoing diversification of sales channels, including going online,” Fung Business Intelligence analysts said in the research note.
However, they added that “while large brands and merchants are well prepared to seize new opportunities provided by department stores and malls, small and medium merchants may not have the resources and technological know-how to set up and manage their online stores.”