At the same time, some more detailed data are intriguing. Taking long-holiday travel as an example, according to the data of domestic accommodation platform, the booking volume of related homestays increased by 520% year-on-year, and many homestays are becoming new landmarks of long-holiday consumption and new highlights of local economic growth. In terms of overseas travel, the overseas transaction data of UnionPay cards during the Golden Week show that China consumers' travel destinations are more dispersed, and they prefer mobile payment products. The consumption of free travellers is more localized, from "buying in buy buy" to in-depth experience, vacation and leisure.
Faced with the fierce debate over whether China is facing "consumption upgrade" or "consumption downgrade" in the past few months, these newly released consumption data of Golden Week can tell everything better: the purchasing power of consumers in China is still strongly promoting China and even the world economy, and consumers in China are embracing a more rational, affordable and experiential consumption pattern in terms of quantity and quality.
In the past debates on consumption upgrading in China, the commentators who hold the "China's consumption downgrade theory" mostly take the popularity of Pinduoduo and the hot sale of instant noodles and pickled mustard tuber as ironclad evidence of China's consumption downgrade. Although there is no clear economic definition of consumption degradation and upgrading, in the current public opinion, debaters regard consumers' active "cheap curiosity" and emphasis on "cost performance" as the main characteristics of "consumption degradation" This view holds that consumers in China are making a decision to reduce their consumption level and consumption level due to lack of confidence in income growth and economic potential and the pressure of high housing prices.
This view is mixed with multiple social problems and lacks logic and data support. In the common practice of various countries, Engel's coefficient is an important indicator to measure the consumption structure and level, that is, to calculate the proportion of food expenditure to total household expenditure. Since 1978, the family Engel coefficient of urban residents and rural residents in China has been declining steadily. By the end of the second quarter of 20 18, in recent years, the consumption proportion of Chinese consumers in necessities such as food, clothing, housing and transportation has decreased year by year, while the consumption in medical services, education, culture and entertainment, transportation and communication services, durable goods and so on has been increasing. Judging from the consumption structure, the general trend of China's consumption upgrading has not changed.
Under this general trend, the emphasis on "bargain hunting" and "cost performance" is not so much "consumption degradation" as a more rational consumption concept and behavior choice. This is essentially consistent with the consumption choices presented by China consumers in tourism accommodation and mobile payment products during the Golden Week. Judging from the consumption development of Japan, the United States and other countries, this choice does not necessarily mean deformity or "degradation". On the whole, the active "honest curiosity" on the e-commerce platform is dominated by consumers rather than suppliers. It is an exploration of a consumption pattern under the integration of sharing and group, e-commerce and internet socialization. Suppliers seek more accurate user positioning and considerable user consumption scale in the fierce competition, while consumers improve efficiency and save money in this process. This is the result of the market game between the supply and demand sides, thus promoting the reasonable optimization of consumers' prices and behaviors.
Consumers in China have bid farewell to the era of single attention to price and paid attention to the consumption experience and practical value of products, which is a great judgment of the current consumption truth in China. In the smoke-filled market competition, merchants are keen catchers of this trend. The financial reports of Master Kong, Uni-President and Fuling Zhacai have made it clear that the most popular products in the market with the largest increase in sales volume are their high-priced products. These companies attributed the market recovery to their "product upgrading", and their "boutique strategy" successfully catered to the opportunity of upgrading the consumer market in China.
China is welcoming a brand-new era of consumption upgrading. China's consumption power is the leading in the world, both in terms of market scale and consumer digitalization. Digitalization is creating brand-new purchasing power and new consumption convenience, and deeply affecting consumers' values and purchase decision-making mode. Global merchants relying on the China market are rapidly adjusting their strategies, hoping to win the China consumers who are embracing the socialization of shopping, value economy and the supremacy of experience, so as to get a slice of the huge dividend of the upgrading of China's consumer market. Consumers in China are on the road of modernization and upgrading, whether in consumption form, consumption mode or consumption structure.