Key Figures and Growth Areas

From January to June, China’s total retail sales of consumer goods amounted to 23.5969 trillion RMB, representing a 3.7% increase compared to the same period last year.

Online retail sales of physical goods reached 5.9596 trillion RMB, up by 8.8%, accounting for 25.3% of the total retail sales of consumer goods.

Significant growth was observed in the online retail sales of food, clothing, and daily necessities:

• Food products: +17.8%
• Clothing: +7.0%
• Daily necessities: +7.8%

Technological Impact on Retail

According to a spokesperson from the NBS, the advent of new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence has generated innovative consumption scenarios.

Emerging consumer models like live-streaming e-commerce and instant delivery services have been pivotal in driving the 8.8% increase in online retail sales of physical goods. Additionally, the volume of express delivery services has surpassed 80 billion packages.

E-Commerce Trends and Analysis

The China Retail Performance Index (CRPI) for July, released by the China General Chamber of Commerce, showed the e-commerce physical goods total sales index at 50.2%, down 4.2 percentage points from the previous month but still within the expansion range.

Meanwhile, the e-commerce average order value index stood at 50.0%, a 1.6 percentage point increase from the previous month.

Analysts attribute the rise in the average order value to the conclusion of mid-year e-commerce promotional events, which resulted in a decrease in “bargain-hunting” consumer behavior.

Outlook

The robust growth in China’s online retail sector reflects the continuous evolution and adaptation of the retail industry to new technologies and consumer preferences. As digital transformation accelerates, the integration of AI and big data is expected to further enhance the efficiency and appeal of online shopping, maintaining the sector’s upward trajectory.

China’s Retail Sales Sees 4.7% Year-on-Year Increase in Q1

China’s retail sector showed a robust increase in March, with total retail sales of consumer goods climbing to 3.9 trillion yuan ($568 billion), marking a 3.1% rise compared to the same month last year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released on April 17. Excluding automobiles, sales rose by 3.9% to nearly 3.5 trillion yuan.

For the first quarter of 2024, the total retail sales reached approximately 12 trillion yuan, a 4.7% increase year-over-year. Sales excluding cars also mirrored this growth rate, amounting to 10.9 trillion yuan.

Urban areas saw significant retail activity, with sales amounting to 3.38 trillion yuan in March alone, up by 3% from last year, while rural retail sales rose by 3.8% to 518 billion yuan. Over the first three months, urban sales increased by 4.6% to 10.4 trillion yuan, whereas rural sales grew faster at 5.2%, reaching 1.6 trillion yuan.

The data also highlighted a divergence in performance across different retail sectors. In March, goods sales increased by 2.7% to reach 3.5 trillion yuan, while the catering industry surged by 6.9% to 396 billion yuan. From January to March, goods sales rose by 4% to 10.7 trillion yuan, and catering revenues jumped by 10.8% to 1.3 trillion yuan.

Looking at retail formats, the first quarter showed mixed results. Supermarkets, convenience stores, specialty stores, and brand-exclusive shops saw sales increase by 2.2%, 5.2%, 6.3%, and 1.1% respectively, while department stores experienced a sales drop of 2.4%.

E-commerce continued to expand rapidly, with online retail sales hitting 3.3 trillion yuan in the first quarter, up by 12.4% year-over-year. Online sales of physical goods, which include food, clothing, and other consumer items, grew by 11.6% to 2.8 trillion yuan, representing 23.3% of the total retail sales. Specific increases were seen in food (21.1%), clothing (12.1%), and other consumer goods (9.7%).

Excluding automobiles, the retail sales ascended to 3,813.1 billion yuan, demonstrating a 7.9% rise. This surge is part of a broader trend observed throughout the year, with total sales reaching 47,149.5 billion yuan, up 7.2% from the previous year.

Non-automobile sales contributed significantly, reaching 42,288.1 billion yuan, a 7.3% increase, showcasing the robust consumer confidence and spending that defines the retail landscape in China.

Urban and rural areas alike witnessed growth, with urban consumer goods sales hitting 3,707.1 billion yuan in December, a 7.2% increase, and rural sales climbing to 647.9 billion yuan, up by 8.9%.

Annually, urban sales reached 40,749.0 billion yuan in 2023, and rural sales saw a notable 8.0% increase to 6,400.5 billion yuan, highlighting the widespread economic vitality across various demographics.

The consumption pattern analysis reveals a diversified growth trajectory, with goods retail sales reaching 3,814.5 billion yuan in December, a 4.8% year-on-year increase.

The catering industry, in particular, experienced a remarkable boom, with income soaring to 540.5 billion yuan, up by an astonishing 30.0%. Over the year, goods retail sales saw a 5.8% increase, totaling 41,860.5 billion yuan, while the catering industry’s income surged by 20.4%, reaching 5,289.0 billion yuan, underscoring the dynamic recovery and expansion of China’s service sectors.

The retail format analysis for 2023 indicates a nuanced landscape.

Department stores, convenience stores, specialty stores, and brand stores in retail enterprises above the designated size witnessed growth rates of 8.8%, 7.5%, 4.9%, and 4.5% respectively.

However, supermarkets experienced a slight contraction, with sales decreasing by 0.4%, signalling shifting consumer preferences and the evolving retail environment.

Online retail sales emerged as a formidable force, totaling 15,426.4 billion yuan in 2023, an 11.0% increase from the previous year.

Physical goods online sales accounted for 27.6% of the total retail sales, reaching 13,017.4 billion yuan, up by 8.4%. Within this segment, food, clothing, and consumer goods experienced growth rates of 11.2%, 10.8%, and 7.1% respectively, illustrating the increasing consumer reliance on digital platforms for a wide range of purchases.

Private domain operation trends of retail chain enterprises in China

In 2022, the total retail sales of social consumer goods were 43,973.3 billion yuan, showing a decrease of 0.2 percent compared to the previous year. Retail sales of consumer goods, excluding automobiles, totaled 39,396.1 billion yuan, a decrease of 0.4 percent.

Retail sales of urban consumer goods in December decreased by 1.8% and rural by 1.3%. In 2022, urban retail sales decreased by 0.3% and rural remained unchanged.

Retail sales of goods decreased by 0.1% in December and increased by 0.5% in 2022. Catering revenue in December decreased by 14.1% and in 2022 by 6.3%.

In 2022, the retail sales of supermarkets, convenience stores, professional stores, and specialty stores in retail enterprises above designated size increased by 3.0%, 3.7%, 3.5%, and 0.2%, respectively compared to the previous year, while department stores decreased by 9.3%.

In 2022, China’s online retail sales reached 13,785.3 billion yuan, an increase of 4.0% compared to the previous year. Online retail sales of physical goods reached 11,964.2 billion yuan, up 6.2%, accounting for 27.2% of total retail sales of social consumer goods.

Online sales of food, clothing, and consumer goods increased by 16.1%, 3.5%, and 5.7% respectively.

Private domain operation trends of retail chain enterprises in China

As part of the transaction, Alibaba will acquire 70.94% of equity interest in A-RT Retail Holdings Limited from Auchan Retail International S.A. and its subsidiary valued at approximately HKD28.0 billion (USD3.6 billion).

A-RT holds approximately 51% of the equity interest in Sun Art. Following the transaction, Alibaba will consolidate Sun Art in its financial statements. Additionally, Peter Huang has been appointed Chairman of Sun Art in addition to his current role as Chief Executive Officer.

Daniel Zhang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group, said:

Alibaba’s strategic investment in Sun Art in 2017 was an important step in our New Retail strategy. The alliance we formed with Auchan Retail and Ruentex was instrumental in building a robust infrastructure to create opportunities and value in China’s retail sector.

Led by Chief Executive Officer Peter Huang, Sun Art has achieved impressive results in its digitalization, and pursued promising synergies with businesses across the Alibaba digital economy.

As the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the digitalization of consumer lifestyles and enterprise operations, this commitment to Sun Art serves to strengthen our New Retail vision and serve more consumers with a fully integrated experience.

In November 2017, Alibaba Group, Auchan Retail, and Ruentex Group announced a strategic alliance to digitalize and introduce New Retail solutions at Sun Art stores, including omnichannel integration and more personalized customer experience.

Over the past three years, Sun Art has made significant progress in the digital transformation under a fast-changing market environment by leveraging resources and technology from the Alibaba ecosystem, to capitalize on the growth opportunities in China’s hypermarket and supermarket space.

Today, all Sun Art physical stores in China have been integrated into Alibaba’s Taoxianda and Tmall Supermarket platforms, providing one-hour and half-day on-demand delivery through deep collaboration with other key businesses across the Alibaba ecosystem, including Ele.me and Cainiao, offering consumers greater product selection and access.

As of June 30, 2020, Sun Art operates 481 hypermarkets and 3 mid-size supermarkets in China, with a focus on strengthening its position through small and offline community stores.

Alibaba opening its first Costco competitor store in Shanghai in Oct

Entering the Mini Program, the user becomes a “Mom” by virtually adopting a Burberry elf for free. And, Tencent and Burberry expect this to be an attractive feature to the female audience in China. Customers can also unlock exclusive content and personalized experiences and share them with their friends.

As customers interact more in the store and online, the elf will constantly transform themselves, upgrading new roles and new styles for customers to explore. Rewards include Burberry’s exclusive Cafe meals and digital content.

Burberry also launched “social currency”, which rewards customer interaction by issuing social currency to unlock exclusive content and personalized experience. In addition, there are many places in the mini program with the voice guide service of spokesperson Zhou Dongyu, and the celebrity will provide room tour.

Through the WeChat mini program, customers can get all kinds of contents such as in-store guide and product information. User can choose to book “Burberry Space” fitting room. Each fitting room has a unique theme, and there are 10 different spaces.

At the same time, users can choose the clothes they want to try on in advance, and Burberry can play different types of music according to their preferences.

Offline shopping experience service is more than just fitting on. “Burberry Space” offline is a place of shopping and fitting, afternoon tea, and style design.

“Fitting in” selfie is a necessary procedure for many girls to go shopping. Burberry has set up a self-portrait spot in each offline fitting room to encourage customers to take photos and share them with friends.

In addition, high luxury theme cafes are no longer new, such as Dior café and Chanel café in Shanghai, but Burberry has played something that China doesn’t have.

Burberry launched Thomas’ café, which is not just an ordinary coffee shop, but a special area for the Burberry community to connect and interact. It offers lectures, workshops, and live performances in addition to various kinds of snacks echoing the “British and Chinese tea culture”.

Users can book or register upcoming events on the WeChat Mini Program. This is the second in the world; the first is in its flagship store in London, UK.

WeChat advertising trends for luxury products in 2020

The CBs will have a coupon rate of 5% per annum and a tenure of three years, with an option to extend by two years at the election of PDD, according to a statement by GOME. The CBs are convertible at HK$1.215 per share, which works out to approximately 1.28 billion GOME shares or approximately 5.6% on a fully diluted basis.

“This strategic partnership is a win-win-win,” said Mr. David Liu, Vice President of Strategy at PDD. “Consumers win because they get a wider range of top domestic and international brands at competitive prices, GOME wins because they can broaden their access to our 585.2 million users, and PDD wins because we enhance our foothold in household appliances and electronics.”

The tie-up marks the first strategic investment by Pinduoduo and comes after its US$1.1 billion share placement to long-term investors in March, when it said it will use the proceeds to enhance user experience.

The partnership also strengthens the e-commerce platform’s position in household appliances and electronics while accelerating its push into consumer-led manufacturing.

As part of the partnership, PDD will help bring the entire GOME product range, including top domestic and international brands such as Siemens, Sony, Haier, Gree and Midea, onto Pinduoduo platform at competitive prices.

PDD will also help GOME’s digitization strategy, extending PDD’s technological capability to help the retailer upgrade its supply chain and tailor its product range to consumer needs and preferences.

GOME will integrate its logistics, delivery and assembly services with the PDD platform to enhance user satisfaction.

With GOME’s extensive network of stores across China, PDD users will be able to enjoy an extension of their user experience to try and experience the products before placing their orders.

The deal also furthers PDD’s push into the consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) realm by working with GOME to source for products that are tailored to customers’ needs.

Founded in 2015, the Shanghai-based company has seen rapid growth as it builds on its strength in all product categories, including household appliances and electronics.

Pinduoduo exceeded RMB 1 trillion (US$144.6 billion) in GMV for the 12-month period ended December 31, 2019. The company saw a 40% increase in active buyers in the same period to 585.2 million, while annual spending per active buyer jumped 53%.

Alibaba launched a new app Taobao Special Offer in March 2020 to compete with Pinduoduo on C2M.

Pinduoduo and Taobao’s manufacturing strategies

The retail sales of consumer goods in urban areas was 35,131.7 billion yuan (US$5,129 bn) in 2019, up by 7.9% year-on-year while that in rural areas was 6,033.2 billion yuan (US$881 bn), up by 9.0% year-on-year.

The catering services in 2019 gained 4,672.1 billion yuan (US$682 bn), up by 9.4% year-on-year.

In 2019, the retail sales of supermarkets, department stores, specialty stores, and specialty stores in the retail sector above designated size increased by 6.5%, 1.4%, 3.2%, and 1.5% respectively over the previous year.

In 2019, China’s online retail sales reached 10,632.4 billion yuan (US$1,552 bn), an increase of 16.5% over the previous year.

Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods reached 8,523.9 billion yuan, an increase of 19.5%, accounting for 20.7 percent of the total retail sales of social consumer goods; among the online retail sales of physical goods, food, clothing, and other consumer goods increased by 30.9%, 15.4%, and 19.8% respectively.

Breakdown of Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods in China: Dec vs. 2019

The turnover of post services totaled 1,623.0 billion yuan, up by 31.5 percent over the previous year.

In 2019, the number of mail delivery was 2.17 billion; that of parcel delivery was 20 million, and that of express delivery was 63.52 billion with revenue reaching 749.8 billion yuan.

eBook: Brick & Mortar Retail’s Transformation with WeChat Pay Smart Store

WeChat is testing a new traffic entrance, using payment pages to drive fans from their offline stores according to eBrun News.

The new function of WeChat Pay is still in the stage of internal testing, which is currently limited to offline face-to-face payment.

Merchants can choose to set a WeChat individual account as a “group customer service” in the backend, and the corresponding QR code will be displayed on the page after the user clicks “Join the merchant welfare group”. Users can join the group by adding customer service as a friend.

Continue to read how TikTok helped a milk tea rise to popularity.

Founded in 2018, Shihuituan is a gourmet community e-commerce service platform. It focuses on fruits and vegetables as well as household items targeting the community as the entry point.

For Youhaodongxi (meaning “Got Good Stuff”) founder Chen Ying, Shihuituan is ultimately meant to become the Uber of convenience stores. “We don’t own convenience stores, but we aim to revamp convenience store transaction models, supply chain models, software systems, and user outreach patterns.”

In the past six months, community group purchase has been a hot topic. After successfully tapping into the community scenario, the local services market is finally within reach of WeChat sellers. Communities, with their large numbers, can no doubt alleviate the consumer flow anxiety faced by both online and offline retailers.

Half a year in, the “thousand group-purchasing app war” is still going on. Several leading contenders have already emerged, leaving little room for small players in the battlefield. The evolving tactics of these leading companies will largely shape the future of community group purchasing.

Whether or not we will see another Meituan rise from the ashes will depend mainly on what these leading companies manage to deliver in 2019. Online for only half a year, Shihuituan (developed by Youhaodongxi) was first to publish their winning reports.

Their numbers show that after reaching the 100 million benchmark at the end of last year, Shihuituan’s GMV soon reached 150 million yuan in January of 2019. They have now penetrated over 10 million households in 60 cities, with 1.5 million registered users and 40 thousand group leaders.

“In third-, fourth- and fifth- -tier cities, the core challenge is ordering size, for which group purchasing is the perfect solution”, says Chen Ying. Previously, rural startups often failed because of purchasing power. Without subsidies, they find it difficult to survive.

Chen Ying first became interested in the group purchasing model 3 years ago. “Youhaodongxi is the first-tier city version of group purchasing, the ‘curator’ (in Youhaodongxi) and the ‘group leader’ (in Shihuituan) are the same things.” The only difference is that due to higher purchasing power in first-tier cities, Youhaodongxi takes on the role of guarantor.

Although group purchasing has only been around for a few years, companies in this arena have already passed the 100 million mark, which goes to show the potential of the field.

With the IPO of Pinduoduo, the market is increasingly welcoming of social retail businesses, while consumers are also beginning to embrace group purchasing. Chen Ying grasped this market signal: the world is ready for community group purchasing.

Youhaodongxi has already taken roots in the first- and second-tier cities. For Chen Ying, the question is how it enters into third- and fourth-tier cities, as well as the rest of the country. “Shihuituan is our major play in the bid to enter rural markets.”

Peng Wang’s first move after his appointment as leader of Shihuituan was to test out different models. “We chose two cities with different geological and consumer characteristics, Nanjing in southern China, and Tianjin in the north. We wanted to test different models.” The one in Tianjin was a convenience store model, while in Nanjing they tested a local mothers model, said Shihuituan CEO Wang Peng.

The advantage of convenience stores is that they already have a customer flow as well as storage space, so they took off fairly quickly. In comparison, it took much more effort for local mothers to start, but because of the tight-knit relationships between neighbors in a community, the delayed potential of local mothers soon became evident.

In July and August of last year, however, Shihuituan’s business in Nanjing took a drop due to the local mothers model. Wang and Chen learned the hard lesson that these local mothers will always put their child first.

“The more free time children have, the fewer time mothers have. If for example, the mothers go on vacation with their children during summer break, the business will stop. This is not a sustainable business model.”

Compared to convenience stores, it is also much harder to find a suitable local mother. One must gain entry into the online circles of the community to find an appropriate candidate…

Read the full article on the eBook: How a community-based e-commerce startup managed to reach 60 cities and 10 million households in China.

Last November, Tianhong’s Junshang 3019sp@ce supermarket officially upgraded to a WeChat payment smart retail store. The number of cashiers reduced from 15-20 to only two on that day, most of which were replaced by self-checkout machines.

Now, consumers only need to open the WeChat “scan” function and scan the product QR code price tag, and the products can be automatically added to the shopping cart. Customers can even perform face recognition and complete payment using machines provided.

In April 2018, Tianhong, one of the major retailers in China, cooperated with Tencent to set up a “smart retail lab” to jointly develop products for new retail. But this is not their first cooperation.

In September 2013, Tianhong reached strategic collaboration with Tencent. In the domestic retail industry, Tianhong was the first company to cooperate with Tencent to customize the WeChat service account.

As of now, Tianhong has completed the digital transformation for most consumer scenarios. The number of Tianhong members is over 18 million, of which the digitalization ratio has reached more than 80%, and the number of digital members is nearly 16 million.

According to the logic of traditional retail, to get more customers, you need to open more physical stores, which is not the best way for Tianhong at that time. “Omnichannel” is the solution for Tianhong to expand the customer base and achieve more customer connections, that is, the online and offline integration mode.

The real beginning of the omnichannel business is cooperation with WeChat. In September 2013, Tianhong and Tencent reached a strategic partnership and jointly developed the first custom WeChat service account in China’s retail enterprises, focusing on three aspects which is instant service, selected service and interactive marketing.

This cooperation immediately caused fluctuations in the capital market. Since Tianhong and Tencent announced the collaboration, within ten days, Tianhong share price experienced five single-day 10% increase, showing full attention and recognition from the capital market.

At the consumer level, it took less than two years to go online, and Tianhong’s WeChat service account has more than 2.5 million fans.

When Tianhong is attracting the new fans through WeChat, it also improves offline business by attracting consumers visiting the physical store. For example, less than two years after the launch, through the start of the WeChat service account, member interaction, and promotion, Tianhong WeChat service account has attracted more than 2 billion people to the physical stores.

Tianhong is a retail company that has started O2O and mobile app very early. In the general perception, when offline physical retail enterprises go through digital transformation, then a large number of increments in sales shall come from the online orders, which is the strategy practiced by Alibaba’s Hema.

However, the digitalization of the Tianhong is not the case. Although Tianhong also has an online business, the current order quantity is about 10% of the total. For the future, Tianhong also said that they do not expect a substantial increase in online orders. As Tan Xiaohua said, “The digitalization transformation of our business is to expand our existing powerful physical store, but not starting a new and smaller scale online business.”

Read the complete eBook “Brick & Mortar Retail’s Transformation with WeChat Pay Smart Store” here.

Total retail sales of consumer goods in China increased to US$1,457 billion in Q1 2019 and roughly 85.3% came from urban areas. Online retail sales of goods and services totaled US$333.45bn, representing 22.9% of the total.

In March 2019, retail sales of consumer goods grew by 8.7% year-on-year to 3,172.6 billion yuan (US$472.73bn).

• About 85.7% of that came from urban areas (2,719.2 billion yuan, up 8.5%), and 14.3% from rural areas (453.4 billion yuan, up 9.4%).
• Grouped by consumption patterns, around 10.7% were from the catering services (339.3 billion yuan, up 9.5%) and 89.3% from retail sales of goods (2,833.3 billion yuan, up 8.6%)

China Retail Overview in Q1 2019

In China, retail sales of consumer goods totaled 9,779 billion yuan (US$1,457.10bn) for Q1 2019, up 8.3% from the prior year period, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

• About 85.3% came from urban areas (8,340.2 billion yuan, up 8.2%) and over 14.7% from rural areas (1,438.8 billion yuan, up 9.2%).
• Grouped by consumption patterns, around 10.9% were from the catering services (1,064.4 billion yuan, up 9.6%) and 89.1% from retail sales of goods (8,714.6 billion yuan, up 8.2%)

Of the total retail sale, the supermarket, department store, and specialty store of units above-designated size went up by 7.5%, 0.9%, and 3.9% year-on-year, respectively; the exclusive shop of units above designated size declined by 0.9% year-on-year.

Online retail sales of goods and services in China amounted to 2,237.9 billion yuan (US$333.45bn) (around 22.9% of the total), increased by 15.3% year-on-year.

Specifically, the online retail sales of physical goods reached 1,777.2 billion yuan (US$264.81bn) with an increase of 21%, accounting for 18.2% of the total retail sales of consumer goods. Food, clothing, and other commodities went up by 24.6%, 19.1%, and 21.3%, respectively.

E-commerce companies investment in retail: China vs. the U.S.

The total retail sales in China is projected to exceed US$5.6trn in 2019, eclipsing that of the U.S. by around US$100 billion. The growth rate might fall from 8.5% in 2018 to 7.5%. Over 35% or US$2 trillion of that will come from online retail, as compared with 11% in the U.S., according to the report from eMarketer.

The leading online retailer Alibaba is to see a 20% growth in sales. However, considering the fierce competition from domestic emerging players like Pinduoduo, its shares might be just 53% this year, which reached as high as nearly 70% in 2016.

Related: Watsons partners with NetEase in offline retail

China is expected to raise its global presence to nearly 56% in the online retail market at the end of 2019 and over 63% by 2022. In contrast, the U.S.’s market share will drop from 17% to 15% in 2019.

Similar to Amazon, the internet giants have marched into the offline retail market. For example, Tencent led the investment of US$5bn to the operator of big shopping centers Wanda Commercial Real Estate in 2018. Tencent also holds a big stake in JD.com. Alibaba spent US$2.9bn to purchase SURRY (dubbed Walmart in China)’s 36% share in 2017.

China’s cross-border import retail e-commerce market grew by 36% to US$16.86 billion in Q4 2018

Update: eMarketer’s mid-2019 update shows China would not surpass the US in total retail sales this year, as expected in its Q4 2018 forecast.

In the whole year of 2018, the total retail sales of consumer goods amounted to 38,098.7 billion yuan (US$5,620.13 billion), up by 9.0% year-on-year (nominal growth rate), according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Of the total. The retail sales of consumer goods of units above-designated size reached 14,531.1 billion yuan (US$2,143.55 billion), with an increase of 5.7%. 

In December 2018, the total retail sales of consumer goods reached 3,589.3 billion yuan (US$529.48 billion) in China, up by 8.2% year-on-year, 0.1 percentage point more than that of November. Of the total, the retail sales of consumer goods of units above-designated size reached 1,508.4 billion yuan (US$222.51 billion), increased by 2.4%.

In terms of different areas, from January to December 2018, the retail sales of consumer goods in urban areas was 32,563.7 billion yuan (US$4,803.63), up by 8.8% year-on-year; while that in rural areas was 5,535.0billion yuan (US$816.5 billion), up by 10.1%.

In December, the retail sales of consumer goods in urban areas was 3,032.9 billion yuan (US$447.4 billion), up by 8.0% year-on-year; while that in rural areas was 556.5 billion yuan (US$82.09 billion), up by 9.3% year-on-year.

In terms of different consumption patterns, the catering services generated a total of 4,271.6 billion yuan (US$630.13 billion) in 2018, up by 9.5% year-on-year. The retail sales of goods were 33,827.1 billion yuan (US$4,990.0 billion), increased by 8.9%. In December, the catering services generated 442.2 billion yuan (US$65.23), up by 9.0% year-on-year. The retail sales of goods were 3,147.2 billion yuan (US$464.26 billion), an increase of 8.0% year-on-year.

The income of retail sales of goods of the enterprises (units) above designated size totaled 13,607.5 billion yuan (US$2,007.31 billion) in 2018, up by 5.7% year-on-year. In December, it was 1,417.5 billion yuan (US$209.10 billion), up by 2.2% year-on-year.

In 2018, the online retail sales of goods and services totaled 9,006.5 billion yuan (US$1,328.59 billion), up by 23.9% year-on-year. The online retail sales of physical goods were 7,019.8 billion yuan (US$1,035.53 billion) with an increase of 25.4%, accounting for 18.4% of the total retail sales of consumer goods. Of the online retail sales of physical goods, food, clothing, and other commodities went up by 33.8%, 22.0%, and 25.9%, respectively.

In 2018, of the total retail sale, the supermarket, store, pro shop, and exclusive shop of units above designated size went up by 6.8%, 3.2%, 6.2%, and 1.8% respectively.

China retail trend 2019; to hit US$6.77 trillion, fueled by e-commerce and new retail