Text / Ba Jiuling (WeChat public account: Wu Xiaobo channel)
When the whole society focuses on the economy and business, consumption has become the most worthy economic topic of the moment.
Consumption will account for more than 80% of China's GDP growth in 2023. Whether you are discussing domestic new energy vehicles, many tourist destinations that have become popular overnight, or the topics of SHEIN and TEMU that continue to appear, the hot topics you discuss all point to one topic - consumption.
The discussion about consumption is also the most tearing topic at the moment.
The middle class is hot to buy Sam's "poor ghost package", McDonald's has increased the price of some meals by 1 yuan, and Gucci has raised the price at the beginning of the year and wants to increase it a few more times...... Not long after the start of 2024, the topic of consumption seems to be torn at both ends.
At the year-end show in 2021, Mr. Wu believed that the future business society will be "K-shaped".
Substituting what we have observed in the consumer culture, a small number of high consumption may eat up most of the average person's spending budget, while in the more routine and general consumption areas, consumers will have lower thresholds and be more price-sensitive.
From 2023 to the present, the consumption phenomenon with a strong sense of contrast has accelerated the pace of our research on the current consumer culture. Therefore, Wu Xiaobo Channel Xiao Report, together with DT Research Institute and New World China, jointly researched and released the "2024 Youth Consumption Trend Report in First-tier Cities" from the perspective of research institutions and first-tier commercial institutions.
In this article, we will explain the new consumption phenomenon that is happening and the research results from the report, based on the research results of the report. If you want to know more about current consumer trends, you can also click on the report to get more detailed data and interpretations.
The wind of cost performance: rationalism
Changing all aspects of young people's consumption
Cost-effective may be a word that accurately summarizes the value judgment of the current young consumer group.
In today's increasingly difficult to make money, consumers do not need to spend several times the price to pay for the unwarranted premium, and rational purchase of cost-effective goods is the right choice. Subsequently, topics such as "79 yuan to buy five and a half catties of bee flowers", "5.9 yuan foundation", "6 yuan to buy 7 eyebrow pencils" and other topics emerged one after another, which further consolidated people's thinking about rational consumption.
In the process of making the research report, we realized that the process of young people chasing cost performance is concretely reflected in three aspects-
The first is "replacement".
A month ago, Wu Xiaobo's channel sent a questionnaire to readers on the whole network related to the consumption of substitution, and a total of 1,352 people responded to us, and nearly 85% of them had purchased substitution in the past year.
Nearly half of the post-95s and post-00s expressed their willingness not to pay for big brands/advertising effects when choosing flat products. This is well above the overall average of 31%.
The second is "channels".
Young people looking for the consumption power brought by replacement need to be released through the right platform.
According to the survey data of DT Research Institute, the top 5 shopping software that consumers use more frequently in 2023 are: Pinduoduo (45.8%), Taobao (40.3%), Douyin (29.9%), JD.com (28.1%) and Xiaohongshu (17.5%). Price is the most common reason that drives consumers to use Pinduoduo.
After discovering the changes in consumers, consumer brands are having trouble sleeping.
Heytea, which used to have a product price of more than 30 yuan, announced that it would raise the price of its products across the board, and would no longer launch products of more than 30 yuan that year. After the price adjustment of Heytea, products of 15-25 yuan account for 60% of the total products. After thoroughly implementing the low-price strategy, Heytea's brand Xixiaocha, which covers the middle and low-price segments, also withdrew from the market; Hema has used the "moving price" as one of the main means of commercial competition, with the intention of finding customers who are pushing oversized shopping carts and looking for plus-size products.
The third is "Scene".
After 2023, a large number of consumers have returned to familiar shopping malls and stores.
According to Winshang Big Data monitoring, the average daily passenger flow of shopping malls in the first three quarters of 2023 was 18,500. Among them, the third quarter exceeded 22,000, which is the best quarter for passenger flow from 2018 to 2023. During the Spring Festival in 2024 (February 10 to February 17), the average daily passenger flow of shopping malls across the country will be 22,100, an increase of 24% compared with the Spring Festival in 2023.
Survey data shows that the enthusiasm of young people to "return to offline" after the epidemic is continuing. Although the most common shopping method for the vast majority of young consumers is still e-commerce platforms, more than one-third of them are still happy to visit stores offline in this consumer survey.
The charm of offline is that it creates a "miniature world of multiple experiences". Located in the CBD of Zhujiang New Town, Guangzhou, the new world "Canton World" is a complex covering catering, leisure, culture and shopping. In 2023, Canton World will be transformed in design, taking "art and leisure in one" and "garden + gallery" as the integration point of business and social.
Young people who are always looking for novelty now don't have to go far and can find a partner by their side. Joining the Halloween cosplay parade nearby, wearing Hanfu and visiting the national style market, these activities quickly met the diversified consumption needs of young people, and made a commercial entity like Canton Tiandi become an artistic circle that brings together young people and young culture.
In addition, the appeal of business centers to young consumers lies in the simplicity and efficiency of meeting various needs. For example, all kinds of consumer and catering brands on the B1 or B2 floors of shopping malls provide more cost-effective goods and services that are more in line with the aesthetics of young people than brands on other floors. Young people are also happy to look at and select products through their own eyes, rather than simply trusting images and sellers' shows.
Times have changed: the logic of consumption has changed
and the shift of the will to consume
Behind the changes in all aspects of consumption is the shift of consumer will.
In 2023, Wu Xiaobo's channel will put this question in front of consumers during the survey of the New Middle Class University - "What do you think is the meaning of consumption?" ”
The vast majority of the responses we received mentioned the key words "happiness" and "basic needs of life". Spending money to bring enjoyment to oneself has become the greatest meaning of consumption. Another 45.8% of consumers believe that spending money is also an investment in the future.
However, after coming to the conclusion that "young people pursue the ultimate cost performance", we cannot assume that young people are alienating from high-priced consumption and enjoyment consumption. Because various phenomena show that today's young people's consumption behavior still retains the part of enjoying consumption.
In order to further study the current consumers' understanding of the distinction between daily consumption and expensive consumption, in March 2024, Wu Xiaobo's channel launched the "2024 Alternative Consumption Concept" questionnaire survey. In the survey, we asked respondents: "What products do you think you can't replace?" ”
It is worth noting that among the more than 1,000 responses received in the survey, in addition to nearly half of the people who believe that food cannot be replaced, 40% of people believe that large durable goods such as home appliances and automobiles cannot be easily replaced.
This also shows that in the current consumer trend, high-value products still have room for survival. However, the number of products that can be classified as high-value is shrinking.
However, in addition to obtaining irreplaceable happiness through high prices, consumers have put forward more requirements for daily consumption, so as to achieve a relative balance in spending.
So we can further get a cycle of "squeezing daily consumption - using the surplus for spiritual enjoyment - continuing to squeeze daily consumption". It's just that in this circular chain, consumer spending, which used to be expensive but dispensable, has gradually lost the favor of consumers.
Staying in the Middle: The New Logic of Urban Competition
It's about treating yourself as a "consumer product"
Young consumers are understanding and finding the most suitable consumer culture for themselves through continuous practice, and this will continue to extend to young people's choices of consumption and living environment.
▶ ▷Choosing a city is often the first step for young people to transform their lives.
Combined with the survey data of the DT Research Institute, more than eighty percent of the respondents have the idea of changing their city life, especially the post-00s. Nearly ninety percent of the post-00s want to live in a different city, and 35.7% of them "often think about it and will take the initiative to find alternative cities".
Choosing a city based on existing knowledge is somewhat limited, so today's young people choose to seek the opinions of others on social networks, and also use City Walk and other methods to rely on their own senses to identify the signals emitted by a city, and examine the city's economic base, public facilities, urban interface, life convenience and other aspects.
▶ ▷After choosing a city, young people will also make demands on the neighborhood where they live.
From a practical point of view, young consumers prefer complex, multi-dimensional commercial spaces - such as "office space with a sense of life". Although this term may sound inconsistent, it is in line with the preferences of young people. In Shanghai, Gensler's Design Director said, "In China, the most important thing for the younger generation of employees is to find an office space with a sense of community and belonging. They wanted to find a place to work with like-minded people. ”
TAKE, for example, K11 ATELIER at Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre, which is not only an office building, but also a "home" for professionals who combine art, work and community. At the commercial level, this office building brings together a large number of high-quality enterprises, many of which are Fortune 500 companies; At the level of life, young people can now also find a life outside of the 8-hour work in the office building.
In the future imagination of young people, "altruism" is also a very important point. Low-carbon lifestyles are also gaining wider recognition among young consumers.
In the behavior of energy conservation and emission reduction, young people most often turn off the lights and turn off the power in time, the proportion is as high as 89%. In terms of recycling resources, double-sided paper and double-sided printing have been practiced the most, with a practice rate of 76.1%.
▶ However, the concept of energy conservation and environmental protection among young people is deepening, but the surrounding environmental protection construction is one step slower.
According to the survey results, 52% of young people believe that "imperfect basic facilities such as garbage sorting facilities and express recycling" are the main obstacles, ranking first. This also confirms why the proportion of young people who donate idle items and actively recycle express boxes is not high, in addition to subjective initiative, it may also be because the public environment provides few low-carbon options, or the infrastructure is not supportive.
Therefore, the construction of urban environmental protection facilities and the energy-saving scheme of commercial operation have yet to catch up with the pace of young people's ideological development. At present, some commercial projects are already catching up.
In 2024, the way young people interact with cities and businesses is already very different from what it used to be. What was once a one-way relationship of "offering" and "receiving" has become a two-way interaction.
Young people are adapting to the changes of the times and changing their consumption perceptions and methods, and cities and businesses are also listening to the voices of young people, and the two sides are creating an integrated and friendly atmosphere. In this "two-way rush" of mutual appreciation and please, people and cities will embrace and incubate more possibilities.
These are some of the main conclusions we have drawn after continuing to observe youth consumption from 2023 to 2024. In the process of producing this main report, we also made a number of sub-reports for keywords such as "flat" and "city", and you can find these footprints in the past posts on Wu Xiaobo's official account.
However, we have put a relatively comprehensive conclusion and argument in the main body of the "2024 Youth Consumption Trend Report in First-tier Cities", and you are welcome to click on the following link to get the full report. We will also continue to observe, sort out, and find new consumption trends that are in line with the current trend in the coming time.
The author of this article | Lu Hong | Editor-in-Charge | He Mengfei
Editor-in-Chief | He Mengfei | Image source | Akatsuki report