Nicole Marysse Guerrero Márquez.

NIB-1.
Mercados financieros internacionales.

Understanding Chinese Consumers: Growth Engine of the World.

Five accelerating trends in China since COVID-19

1. Digitization: Digital tools become increasingly popular solutions, expanding

from B2C to B2B.
2. Declining global exposure: Rising importance of domestic markets,
technology, and capital.
3. Rising competitive intensity: Technology and agility drive winners to capture
the lion’s share of industry value.
4. Consumers come of age: Consumers (especially the young) are becoming
more prudent and health-conscious.
5. Private and social sectors step up The private sector plays a stronger
socioeconomic role, while the social sector rises.

COVID-19 has accelerated digital developments in three key areas B2C

interactions (online channels), B2C sectors (physical interactions) and Business
processes.

The accelerating maturity of Chinese consumers can be seen in four key areas:
Young consumers’ spending, even more prudent personal financial management,
health conscious purchase decisions and purchasing trade-offs amid a flight to
quality.

The acceleration of changes to the role of the private sector is evident in three key
areas: Private sector actors aiding the national recovery with technology and
resources, policy announcement to strengthen the role of the market and rising
influence of social institutions.

Clearly, the private sector has not only increased its contribution to China’s
economy, but also its role in society. While the public sector still plays a critical role
in terms of resource allocation, and during the crisis received a large amount of
centrally allocated funds, even SOEs were encouraged by the government to
support the private sector. Meanwhile, a powerful new group of social institutions
 Nicole Marysse Guerrero Márquez.
NIB-1.
Mercados financieros internacionales.

have contributed significantly toward the response to COVID-19, and are expected
to play an elevated role in Chinese society going forward.

Prior to COVID-19, China was already among the world’s most digital nations,
accounting for close to half of global ecommerce sales. When the virus struck,
lockdown measures accelerated an ongoing trend of consumers shifting away from
traditional retail towards online channels. This opened online ordering to new
customer segments, with people over 30 years old increasing their share of
ecommerce spend by 11 percentage points between January and February,
according to QuestMobile data. China’s sophisticated digital infrastructure ensured
that online initiatives launched in response to COVID-19 offered quality service, not
least in fulfilling orders in hours or days rather than the weeks it might take in less
developed economies.

Though the virus is under control for now, the consumer environment has
fundamentally shifted, challenging brands and retailers to reconsider their
operating models across product mix, pricing, channel strategy, and marketing.
Consumer companies should consider adopting the following actions:

1. Innovate product offerings and services

2. Accelerate online and omnichannel
3. Build a resilient and balanced supply chain
4. Improve organizational Agility
5. Institutionalize M&A
6. Clarify purpose

 Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic seems to be one of the most difficult

chapters for modern humanity, talking on a moral, political and economic
way, we still can not measure how much we lost, still, we can measure the
way that the world is recovering, and of course, the best example for this is
China.
 Nicole Marysse Guerrero Márquez.
NIB-1.
Mercados financieros internacionales.

China is where all of this started, they were the first country that activated
the alarm for COVID-19 pandemic, causing a chain reaction in nearest
countries where the virus was not noted yet. Even though, with the past of
the months, and following lots of safety measures, they were the first ones
to go back to normality, and not only talking about the use of masks, the
regulation in crowded places or rapid tests, they used alternatives that really
marked the after and before for the rest of the countries, demonstrating that
normality before the pandemic has a completely different meaning now.

 Point of view: I think that is very important for us, and international business
students to understand how such a big country like China with hundreds of
millions of people could go back to normality in such a short period of time
compared to us, and according to this report is mainly because of the
actions implemented by the citizens, not only the government, because of
course that this strategies applied when all of this started made a huge
impact but China´s increase in exports and digital activities comes from
decades ago, so, maybe it was more kind of perspective and finally is China
´s moment to show who´s the trully economic giant.