People purchase Spring Festival couplets at a regional market for the approaching Chinese New Year in Haikou, south China’s Hainan Province, Feb. 6, 2024. (Xinhua/Pu Xiaoxu)BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua)– During the current Spring Festival vacation, Hefei resident Yang Xiaoyan and her household delighted in consuming shrimp and crabs from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, sausages from Guangzhou, beef from Brazil, and lamb chops from New Zealand– all at their own table. “Online shopping is really practical, and you can have these various foods sent by mail to you,” Yang stated. Over the last few years, Chinese individuals like Yang have actually accepted this modification to the custom of stockpiling on arrangements for the Chinese Lunar New Year vacation, thanks to developing digital innovation and the nation’s efforts to promote online intake. Throughout the monthlong 2024 nationwide online Spring Festival shopping season, which ended on Feb. 17, China’s online retail sales amounted to 1.2 trillion yuan (about 168.86 billion U.S. dollars), with an everyday average year-on-year boost of about 9 percent, He Yadong, a representative for the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), stated on Thursday. As the very first significant online activity to increase intake this year, the shopping season incorporated the online marketing activities of numerous regions, e-commerce platforms and shops, and accommodated customer activities associated with the Year of the Dragon, likewise referred to as the Year of the Loong. China’s e-commerce platforms have actually raced to benefit on the shopping season because 2021 by preparing varied products and activities to bring in customers. Instant-retail platform Meituan Instashopping’s sales of popular Chinese New Year presents such as milk, cherries and baijiu, a Chinese spirit, struck record highs throughout the month, and sales of product classifications such as home devices, cosmetics and family pet products grew at rates going beyond 100 percent, according to information from the platform. Smart innovation, eco-friendly and health-related items were preferred by customers, as were services and products including components of standard Chinese culture. According to information from Vipshop, a significant online discount rate seller in China, the sales volume of “China-chic” Year of the Dragon clothes increased 120 percent in the very first week of the shopping season compared to the week previously, and the sales volume of Year of the Dragon sweatshirts saw a more than threefold month-on-month rise. Anhui, Shaanxi and Shanghai held online sales activities for time-honored brand names to highlight the beauty of stylish, China-made items, and Zhejiang hosted activities such as an intangible cultural heritage Lunar New Year shopping celebration, according to the MOC. Home device seller Suning’s information reveals that the client circulation at its shops across the country has actually escalated 206 percent year on year given that the start of the monthlong occasion, and orders for its home device trade-in services have actually broadened 153 percent year on year. The custom of carrying out an extensive spring tidy before the Spring Festival promoted need for associated smart home devices, with sales of robotic vacuum, rotary flooring scrubbers and clever window cleansing robotics rising over 221 percent month on month, according to Suning. Chinese individuals tend to connect increased value to health throughout the standard time for household reunions. A number of e-commerce platforms kept track of by the MOC saw their sales of biking and snowboarding devices boost by over 50 percent from the previous year, and sales of natural food at chain hypermarkets climbed up roughly 20 percent year on year. In county-level backwoods, sales of donkey-hide gelatin powder and fresh stewed cubilose saw threefold year-on-year boosts, and sales of items such as glucose screens and albumen powder increased by over 150 percent year on year, according to information from significant e-commerce platforms, consisting of JD. com. China saw a robust revival of usage throughout this year’s Spring Festival, and the favorable purchasing pattern was a great start for online usage in 2024, stated Li Jiwei, deputy dean of the Meituan Research Institute. The MOC will continue to hold online-consumption advertising activities with numerous styles, consisting of the event of an excellent harvest and products along the Silk Road, as part of efforts to satisfy customer need in a better way, He stated. ■
Monthlong Spring Festival shopping season brings red-hot sales
