East China’s Jiangsu province reported stable growth of the consumer goods market in 2018 with continuing expansion of the total sales volume, the optimization of the spending structures, the obvious integration of the business modes, indicating that consumption continued to be the main driving force of the province’s economic growth.
In 2018, the province's retail quota of more than 20 million and the retail business with a quota of more than 5 million achieved a 25% year-on-year increase in retail sales through the public network。
The accommodation and catering industry achieved a 49.4% increase in meal revenue through the public network, leading the online retail sales of consumer goods by 21.4 and 45.8 percentage points respectively.
For consumers, the access to convenience stores is getting closer than ever with the consumer demand for "last 1 km" solved. More Tmall stores and Jingdong convenience stores have been opened in more locations. The wide application of artificial intelligence, big data, modern logistics and other technologies has spawned new retail formats such as Alibaba’s Hema stores and Suning Jiwu stores while offline stores are re-engaging more and more consumers. Alibaba's Hema stores, where customers can shop, dine and order commodities for delivery from their mobile phones via Alipay, have come into the spotlight recently.
In 2018, under the condition that basic living needs were met, the growth rate of basic living commodities in the province slowed down, while consumption upgraded goods maintained rapid growth.
The retail sales of communication equipment represented by smartphones and tablets increased by 30.8% year-on-year, 12.2 percentage points higher than the same period of last year.
The retail sales of books, magazines and magazines edged up by 15.9% and furniture by 11.8%.
As people's demand for service consumption continues to expand, service consumption such as leisure tourism, cultural entertainment, elderly healthcare, and information consumption is gradually developing toward quality-based while the growth rate is relatively gaining momentum.
In 2018, the total retail sales of consumer goods in Jiangsu reached 332.34 billion yuan, an increase of 7.9%, a strong indication of the accumulation of new kinetic energy consumption. As the forerunner of the national economic development, Jiangsu has continued to expand the scale of the consumer market, accelerate the pace of consumption upgrading, and enhance the steady contribution rate of consumption to economic growth so as to give full play to the role of being the stabilizer and the ballast stone.
