Heat wave across China pushed beverage sales

According to Kantar Worldpanel, sales in China's fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market in the 12 weeks to 15th July of 2022 increased by 3.9% year-on-year. The 4 weeks in July witnessed a 4.8% boost in sales value, suggesting an accelerated recovery from the previous lockdown. 
Food saw a steady increase in sales by 4.8% during these the past four weeks. With the heat wave in China spreading to more cities in July, beverage sales surged by 14%. Although the shockwave of the lockdown dragged down the sales of personal care, the restoration of social activities helped it to get back to 2.1% year on year growth in July.
Among the major modern trade retailers, Sun-Art managed to hold its market position, despite its market share shrinking by 0.8 percentage points the past 12 weeks compared to last year. Wal-mart continued to perform well due to the consistent strong performance of Sam’s club. Comparatively, Vanguard and Suning lost the most share point by 0.8 and 0.7 respectively driven by a loss of shoppers.
Shopping online maintained its robust sales growth by 6.8% in the past 12 weeks, and upper-tier regions delivered an increase of more than 12%, thanks to more aggressive online promotions. Affected by the restricted transportation before, ecommerce lost some penetration but this was offset by a 9.4% increase in the number of trips.
JD group snatched 0.5 percentage points of market share, on the back of its strong performance during the 618 eCommerce festival. Douyin and Kuaishou kept their growth momentum by acquiring more penetration, increasing by 10.3 and 2.9 percentage points respectively. The short-video platforms demonstrated its strength throughout the lockdown and will be well positioned for faster development. 

Source: Kantar Worldpanel

Community Group Buy and Aggregator saw the fastest growth within the platform-based retail, especially Community Group Buy with substantial uplifts in penetration, resulting in significant sales growth, even post lockdown.