Text | consumption new push official
In 2024, the total retail sales of social consumer goods in China reached 48.79 trillion yuan, an increase of 3.5% over the previous year. This shows the resilience of China’s consumer market, but it also means that China’s economic development has bid farewell to high growth rate and formally turned to a new stage of high-quality development, and the consumer market has also shown a structural upgrade. Behind this is the objective law of economic development and the development of human needs at the bottom, which is also the foundation of China’s confidence and determination in the development of consumer brands.
To understand the direction of the structural transformation of the consumer market, we first need to clarify the reasons for insufficient consumption.
Per capita disposable income and its expected shortcomings are the key factors. At the same time, some enterprises are facing operational difficulties, and the unemployment rate of young people has aroused great concern. In addition, the slowdown in economic growth, the scar effect of epidemic situation and the mismatch between supply and demand have all affected consumption to some extent. These problems will eventually lead to a common result-consumers generally feel insecure, which is also the lowest logic behind insufficient consumption.
The change of consumers’ mentality will eventually appear as actual consumption behavior, which is also the structural adjustment direction that consumer enterprises need to focus on. First of all, in daily life, consumers pay more attention to their actual needs and "pay the bill accurately", such as diet, basic health and spiritual enjoyment. Secondly, "avoiding future risks" has become an increasingly important consideration in consumers’ purchase decisions, and consumers will subconsciously "tighten their wallets" to reduce unnecessary expenses, which has also led to a slowdown in the consumption growth of large-scale expenditure products such as automobiles, furniture and household appliances in the past year. In addition, for optional consumption represented by luxury goods such as wearing and beauty, consumers’ pursuit of value preservation, practicality and quality-price ratio is increasing, and they are more sensitive to price changes.
With the more cautious consumption of Chinese residents, "just need" has become the core driving factor of consumption decision-making. At the same time, with the increase of residents’ consumption insecurity and the upgrading of consumer demand, the connotation and extension of "just need" are undergoing profound changes. In addition to the upgrading and adjustment of consumption structure, CBNData also noticed the incremental opportunities in the domestic sinking market and the sea market, and discussed them in detail in the White Paper.
In this context, on December 11th, 2024, the Central Economic Work Conference clearly listed boosting consumption and expanding domestic demand as the primary task of economic work in 2025, which indicates that the consumer market will usher in more solid policy support in the future.
In the short term, "trade-in" is an important policy, in which "greening", "intelligence" and "aging" have become the key directions, and these are also important trends in category consumption upgrading. Angel, a brand of water purification, believes that in the face of the consumption upgrading trend of home appliance industry, the core of brand competitiveness lies in its deep insight into consumer demand and continuous technological innovation. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the supported categories of new energy vehicles, household appliances, smart homes and digital electronic products achieved significant growth in retail sales in October 2024. In 2025, the policy also made triple efforts in terms of subsidies, financial support and subsidies.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
However, the old-for-new policy is more of a "powerful medicine" to promote consumption, which has a quick effect, but to some extent, it treats the symptoms rather than the root cause. The key to the continuous expansion of consumption lies in whether China can adapt to the long-term upgrading trend of consumption structure and form a new growth model dominated by service consumption. The most noteworthy direction is the emergence of new consumption represented by digital consumption, green consumption and healthy consumption.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
In addition to the evolution of consumption structure, the development of cities is also closely related to commercial development. From the emergence of cultural tourism cities to the first economic competition, the trend of one city, one IP, one industry, one group of people is coming and going. How to capture the fleeting "dividend" of urban development is also very important for enterprises to achieve the phased growth goals.
With the external environment of intensified competition and insufficient demand, the consumer market is full of variables, but it also contains infinite possibilities. In this critical period, the supply-side capital began to look for high-quality enterprises with long-term thinking; The demographic changes on the demand side also provide new structural opportunities for the industry.
On the supply side, some service consumption tracks that were neglected in the past showed growth potential in 2024, attracting entrepreneurs and capital inflows. At the same time, under the prudent investment logic, capital favors scientific, large-scale and extremely subdivided categories. It is worth mentioning that in 2024, the capital players in the venture capital market have undergone structural changes, and the patient capital represented by state-owned assets and CVC has accelerated into the consumption field and become a new force in consumer investment.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
The secondary market has also undergone structural changes in the past year. The most obvious thing is that consumer companies have flocked to go public overseas, especially Hong Kong stocks have become the first choice for enterprises to queue up for IPO. From the results, domestic consumer enterprises have made brilliant achievements, and many brands, including Mao Geping, Bruco and Small Vegetable Garden, have successfully realized their dreams in 2024. However, the successful listing only means that enterprises have stood at a new starting point, and what awaits them in the future is a more rigorous examination of the capital market.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
On the demand side, silver-haired people and Generation Z are working together to lead China’s consumer spending to climb. CBNData will divide people of different city levels and generations, make a comparative analysis according to their consumption willingness and income stability, and gain an in-depth insight into the consumption characteristics and behavior changes of different people, especially those with silver hair over 60 years old and generation Z, so as to better understand the differences in consumption choices of high consumption potential groups and the influencing factors behind them.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
CBNData found that in 2024, beauty care, 3C digital products, and sports and fitness products were the categories that silver-haired people wanted to consume most. At the same time, they also actively explore emerging small categories such as household medical devices and smart home equipment, and the overall consumption shows a trend of "trendy", "younger" and "customized".
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
Compared with other age groups, Generation Z is more willing to spend in 2024, paying special attention to instant gratification, happy experience and social functions brought by consumption. For example, the student party tends to spend leisure and entertainment and electronic products and hardware; Generation Z, who just entered the workplace, has more diversified consumption preferences, attaches importance to personal image management, and some favor pet consumption and real estate investment. It is worth mentioning that Generation Z treats the world with a pragmatic attitude and disenchants consumption. They like to "rent instead of buy" and pay more attention to the price and emotional satisfaction of daily commodity purchase than the brand.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
The diversified transformation of supply and demand is transmitted to the consumer market, showing the characteristics of good performance of essential consumer goods, weak overall optional consumer goods and sustained release of service consumption demand.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
Around the seven tracks of food and beverage, beauty and personal care, pet consumption, outdoor sports, tide play, cultural tourism and catering, the White Paper has carried out specific demand mining in chapter 2.3. CBNData found that essential consumer goods, such as food and beverage, showed a fierce competition in the growth trend, and the rise of white brands and the increase of capacity promoted the popularity of Oleqi and Fat Donglai. Among optional consumer goods, beauty personal care products are continuously involved and the demand is highly subdivided. Especially under the background of "scientific skin care" and "streamlined skin care", the skin care brand represented by Fulifang Si has become a "safe choice" for consumers. The "experiential" consumption areas driven by self-satisfaction, such as sports outdoor products and pet consumption market that directly hits emotional value, continue to strengthen; As a relatively small track, Chaowan Wenchuang industry has strong resilience in growth rate and there is still room for expansion. In the cultural tourism consumption market, the travel willingness of the Z-era and silver-haired people significantly exceeds that of other age groups, which together shape the future pattern of the tourism market; Compared with the popularity of cultural tourism, the catering market in 2024 has entered the stage of replacement of excess stores. Whether it is sinking or exploring the mode of small stores, businesses are still trying to transform and save themselves.
In 2024, the marketing environment is more complicated and uncertain. The relationship between supply and demand is further tilted to the buyer, the convergence of goods, markets and contents is intensified, and the marketing kinetic energy is increasingly insufficient. Facing the current situation, CBNData believes that taking "people-oriented" as the cornerstone, focusing on systematic and emotional content marketing, focusing on quality-price ratio, experiential channel marketing and accelerating brand marketing are creating opportunities for enterprises to maintain their vitality.
In terms of content marketing, the "head-only anchor theory" of talent marketing has been unable to support the long-term healthy development of the brand in the past two years. If the brand wants to reach consumers efficiently and accurately, it needs to be prepared from the dimensions of coverage, accuracy and richness when formulating marketing strategies. Therefore, KOC with strong trust, KOS with strong transformation and vertical talents with heavy tonality have become the key layout of brand systematic marketing. For example, Bawang Tea Kee anchored college students as its KOC incubator; Estee Lauder has built a KOS matrix of nearly 700 accounts in November 2024; On October 18th, 2024, L ‘Oré al participated in the live broadcast of Spring Appreciation Treasure with goods and exceeded one million sales.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
At the same time, emotional resonance has become an important starting point for brands to convey their minds. Among them, short plays, cultural tours and sports events, as the content carriers that have been heating up in recent two years, have become the bridge between consumer enterprises and consumers, attracting a large number of brands to lay out. How to participate in short play marketing? How to capture the upsurge of cultural tourism? How to take advantage of sports bonus? The White Paper is also disassembled in detail in chapter 3.1.2 for the three major content marketing directions.
In terms of channel marketing, in the absence of really good product and consumption mobilization ability, doing deep quality-price ratio and doing heavy experience has become the problem-solving ideas of many brands. In 2024, keywords such as low price and quality-price ratio became hot topics in the industry. Many brands actively laid out hard discount channels such as snack shops in this year, and in order to avoid affecting the "brand value", they set a "bottom line" that only provided channel-specific products or channel-specific new products.
However, although the distribution of discount channels can indeed alleviate the brand’s traffic anxiety to some extent, it is not the only choice for brands. Some brands regard the added value such as experience and interaction as the consumption reason provided to customers. Yigrowth, a marketing service agency under Yingfan Technology, said that for such brands with overweight experience, because online e-commerce channels are easy to capture the characteristics of each user’s transaction link, industry players put forward the concept of full-link experience and can create a seamless experience journey for consumers by optimizing five types of experience contacts; Creating an immersive space, providing additional services, and strengthening interaction have become important ways for brands to create differentiated experiences offline.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
In the face of the zero growth slowdown of domestic social organizations and the fierce marketing environment, in addition to doing a good job in content marketing and channel marketing to achieve efficient reach and transformation of consumers, many consumer enterprises choose to speed up the pace of "going out to sea". At the same time, based on the consideration of long-term strategy and the avoidance of changing risks such as platform policies and geopolitics, more and more enterprises began to strengthen brand attributes and compete with overseas brands for the minds of local consumers. In this context, the DTC model represented by independent stations and offline self-operated stores has become a new beacon for enterprises to enter the "international cycle" in the past two years.
At present, consumer enterprises are undoubtedly in an era of VUCA, and risks are ubiquitous, interrelated, unclear, unpredictable and difficult to attribute. How to survive and develop in such an environment has become the core proposition for every enterprise to answer.
By combing the risk disclosure sections of the annual reports of 143 consumer listed companies in the world in fiscal year 2023, CBNData summarizes seven types of risks faced by current consumer companies. Compared with the data of risk disclosure of consumer companies in 2023 as a whole, macro-political and economic factors, ESG-related risks and policy, law and compliance risks have become the TOP3 risks with the largest increase. Among them, ESG, an emerging risk with wider coverage, is particularly worthy of attention by enterprises.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
What are the key topics of ESG? According to A-share "Guidelines for Sustainable Development Reports of Listed Companies (Trial)", ESG-related information disclosure of enterprises needs to include 21 specific topics in three dimensions: environment, society and governance.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
For consumer enterprises, ESG issues are all-encompassing, and CBNData believes that supply chain and product design are the key cut-in links to systematically deal with environmental dimension risks. This is mainly because most of the energy and material resources consumed by consumer enterprises occur in the supply chain. Only from the distribution of greenhouse gas emissions, enterprises that provide end products and services such as food, fashion and FMCG account for 77%-90% of the total emissions only in the upstream (supply chain) of the third scope. The key to solving the problem of supply chain lies in the product research and development and design links firmly controlled by consumer enterprises. CBNData also focuses on how consumer enterprises respond to climate change risks in Chapter 4.1.2 of the White Paper.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
The risk of social dimension is a more diverse and complex sector. For consumer enterprises, employees are the core issue. Based on the classification standards in the market, CBNData believes that the issues related to employees are mainly focused on the four themes of labor management, employee health and safety, human capital development and supply chain labor standards, and each category has different subdivision directions worthy of attention.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
Another emerging risk that deserves the attention of consumer enterprises is the risk of network information and data security. On the one hand, in recent years, the global demand for consumer digital information protection has been increasing, and the cost of non-compliance (fines and reputation losses) has been rising; On the other hand, ensuring network information security is also one of the necessary preconditions for enterprises to realize digital transformation strategy, and the dependence of each link on digital infrastructure in the process of enterprise operation is also increasing. Therefore, the importance of overall network information security, including IT infrastructure and digital assets, is increasing.
Image source: CBNData "Su Xin 2024 White Paper on the Growth of Consumer Brands in China"
It is not enough for enterprises to manage short-term and medium-term risks in order to achieve longer-term growth goals. Corporate sustainable development (CSD) rooted in stakeholder theory has become a common choice for consumer enterprises to systematically cope with risks, build organizational resilience and drive long-term growth. The White Paper also focuses on the sustainable development strategy of consumer enterprises in chapter 4.2, and discusses how sustainable development strategy can create value for enterprises in three aspects: risk management, improving return on capital and driving future growth.