Shanghai sees $2.2b shopping frenzy
Gigantic consumer market on steady recovery during May Day holidays
Young consumers made a 100-meter queue outside Shanghai’s iconic New World City mall on Monday night, buying everything from lipstick to sneakers and cars, part of the city’s shopping campaign in which more than 15.68 billion yuan ($2.22 billion) of consumer goods were sold within 24 hours.
China, the world’s largest consumer market, saw a sound recovery in spending during the May Day holidays – the first long holiday since January – as the coronavirus outbreak ebbed.
With consumers satisfying pent-up demand and retailers handing out billions of coupons, rekindling China’s gigantic consumption market is moving faster than expected, a bullish sign for the economy.
But industry insiders said that a full return to normalcy may take time, as some consumers have seen their incomes fall or have lost their jobs, which affects their spending ability.
New World City, a large mall in downtown Shanghai, was lively on Tuesday as shoppers checked out clothes, shoes and beauty products, and asked for more discounts and cosmetics samples at the counters.
On the first floor, customers waited in long zigzags to redeem coupons they harvested on e-commerce platform Pinduoduo.
Xu Sang, marketing manager of the shopping mall, told the Global Times that on Monday night, the mall stayed open an extra 30 minutes until 10:30 pm as customers rushed in. The queue outside the store at 9 pm exceeded 100 meters at one point.
Sales during the five-day holiday had reached about 80 million yuan as of Tuesday, compared with 16 million yuan during the Qingming Festival in April. It is estimated sales for the five-day holidays could hit 100 million yuan.
Shanghai kicked off the May 5 Shopping Festival, one of the largest-ever consumptionboosting campaigns, on 8 pm on Monday night. Within six minutes, more than 100 million yuan of goods were sold in Shanghai.
Hundreds of malls, companies and e-commerce platforms, including New World City, Tesla, L’Oreal, Alibaba, Tencent, Suning and Pinduoduo participated in the gala, either by giving out coupons worth a total of 20 billion yuan or arranging special offerings for consumers.
A 30-something Shanghaibased consumer surnamed Jin spent 7,000 yuan during the five-day holidays on a variety of goods.
“Now I bought more than before the epidemic, even things I thought were too expensive before,” Jin told the Global Times.
Across China, at least 68 cities issued billions of coupons to boost spending during the May Day holidays, according to media reports. A 1-yuan coupon could drive about 3.5 yuan in consumption on average, said a report issued by Alipay.
Liu Dingding, a Beijingbased veteran industry observer, said that the robust holiday consumption shows that the Chinese economy has bounced back from a three-month-long hiatus. “It provided a muchneeded shot in the arm for confidence in the Chinese economy.”