Record Sales in the Middle of Pandemic

JD.com, one of the most popular online shopping platforms in China, set a new record this year, while Tmall, another e-commerce giant, almost tripled the JD.com’s result. Even in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic Chinese consumers do not give up their shopping habits.

618, a shopping festival, which starts every year on June 1st and ends June 18th brought a record amount of 269.2 billion RMB (33.7 billion EUR) of orders to JD.com. The number of orders in general grew more than 30% compared to the same period last year, while some sectors, such as grocery shopping multiplied more than 5 times.

Another e-commerce giant, particularly popular among the international brands, Tmall, recorded 698.2 billion RMB (87.5 billion EUR) of orders during the same time, more than twice the amount of JD.com.

Same growing trends were recorded among other e-commerce platforms, which resulted in China online retail sales increase for 8.6% in the first quarter, despite the outbreak of COVID-19 in exactly the same period of the year. Unfortunately, the rest of the retail sector proved not to be that resilient. Offline sales of consumer goods in the first quarter of 2020, dropped by 16.2%.

While COVID-19 pandemics resulted in economies all over the world struggling to survive, in China it led to the major boost in spending. The reason lies in incredibly convenient online platforms which offer all kinds of products and services, the extreme caution when it comes to visiting stores and closed public spaces and most importantly the endless thirst of Chinese consumers for foreign products and services combined with high purchase power.

It seems that there is no challenge big enough to stop Chinese customers from buying… As long as they can buy online.

Categories: China market, E-commerce, Tmall, JD, Record sales