Double 11 festival fueled the e-commerce growth
Kantar Worldpanel’s latest figures for 12 weeks ending 29th November 2019 reports consumer spending on FMCG in China grew by 5.6% compared with the same period last year. Modern trade (including hypermarkets, supermarkets, and convenience stores) struggled to grow experiencing a drop in penetration of 0.7ppts versus the same period last year as shoppers switched their spend to eCommerce to take advantage of the Double 11 shopping festival. E-commerce growth far outstripped that of any other channels, reporting 35.9% value growth and a 10ppts penetration increase.
Against a backdrop of declining share of modern trade, compact hypermarket and smaller formats bucked the trend with a value growth pf 10.1% by attracting more shoppers and increasing the number of trips shoppers make. Vanguard opened two Vanguard Marts in Hangzhou and Suzhou in November, inside which the Vanguard supermarket is more compact by scaling down the non-food sections whilst expanding the fresh food ones and providing full scan-and-go as well as O2O deliveries. Vanguard plans to open 100 Vanguard Marts in the next 3 years.
The Double 11 festival fueled the e-commerce growth and Alibaba Group announced that it generated RMB268.4 billion of gross merchandise volume (GMV) on November 11, 2019, an increase of 26% compared to 2018. Its growth is powered by lower-tier cities and livestreaming. 3 out of 10 urban households in county-level cities and county purchased FMCG in Alibaba in past 12 weeks, which is an increase of 11 ppts compared with last year. This year brands are running influencer livestreaming campaigns in order to activate viewers’ purchasing intent and transactions during Taobao Live generated nearly RMB20 billion in sales. More brands surpassed the 100 million RMB GMV mark, indicating that larger brands where accounting for a larger proportion of the sales.