E-commerce sector gets holiday bounce

China’s burgeoning e-commerce sector received a “fresh” boost from the longer-than-usual May Day holidays, with millennials and high-quality brands being the growth boosters.

Data from leading online food delivery platform Eleme showed that food orders by people born after 1995 rose by 112.4 percent during the holidays, compared with the same period a year ago.

The group also made up for over one-third of the total tourism consumption during the holidays in Fliggy, the online tourism platform of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Purchase of tourism products on Fliggy by people born after 2000 rose 500 percent on an annualized basis, it said.

Online hotel orders from younger parents, with children under the age of three, soared by 77 percent from a year ago during the four-day vacation.

“The younger generation, especially those born after 1990 and 1995, are more used to ‘fingertip’ consumption and are fast becoming disrupters in the e-commerce sector,” said Yang Qin, a business analyst at market consultancy CBNData.

According to a report from CBNData, people born in the 1990s and 1995s surpassed those born in the 1980s to become the biggest spenders in the vertical industry of e-commerce consumption.

In addition, high-quality home appliances have become one of the most popular items bought on e-commerce websites during the holiday period.

Leading e-commerce platform JD claimed that high-quality household items such as home appliances, home building materials and cooking utensils, saw a sales uptick during the past few days.

Data from another online e-commerce firm Suning showed that sales of home appliances jumped 49 percent from the same period in 2018, with air-conditioners, electric fans and televisions being the top sellers.

“This year’s May Day Holiday showed that people have stronger high-quality consumption demands, reflected not only in high-quality products but also in services,” said Zhao Ping, head of international commerce of the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

Zhao added that the new consumption trend of this year’s holiday is also an epitome of the overall consumption trend in the country this year.

“The growth has been driven by the surge in disposable incomes and the middle-income population,” she added.

The holiday period also triggered demand for travel-related products. Suning reported that sales of sunblock products and sunscreen clothes grew 74 percent and 107 percent year-on-year. Travel packages rose by 128 percent during the period. Fan Feifei contributed to this story.