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Playing today with the title of a wildly successful UK stage production few years + back: “No Sex please, we’re British.” Available free to read on line if so inclined.
As an introduction, as it were, today we are continuing with our run of Alibaba / Taobao promotional articles. We are also drawing your attention to a recent article we ran on the dangers of generalising consumers, especially Chinese, by their generation. Or any other arbitrary yard stick for that matter.
So, although this article takes Chinese youth as its base, common sense tells us that we can not fit every young Chinese into this setting. However, it does act as a rough guide as to where things maybe heading. With that in mind, lets read on John.
5 Trends Possibly Changing Youth Retail
Alibaba articles like this and others we have referenced draw their content from 2 main sources. Firstly, secondary data, ie, stuff what other people wrote. Usually from respectable researchers such as McKinsey.
Secondly from primary data. ( that’s confusing isn’t it) In Alibaba’s case, from the millions of products and billions of sales made through their on line stores, Tmall and Taobao. This primary data (big data) gives them extremely good insight into trends and where they may be heading.
As another bit of their big data, they also draw from their own unique Alibaba Group’s Maker Festival which we reported on here:
But, as we noted above: none of this in set in stone.
So, with all those caveats in mind, lets take a quick look at what Alibaba see as current or soon to be trends among Chinese youth in no particular ranking order.
#1 Sport and fitness.
In so far as sport and games are concerned, younger gen Chinese seem to be looking for more socially “fun” games. Popular are contactless games that are not run along typical gender rules. We talked about the “New” Chinese craze of flying disks (Frisbie) in our own article re the Alibaba Maker Festival. Yes, the same one we mentioned above!
#2: Pets.
Now the pet industry in China is already crowded. Chinese are marrying later and opting not to have families – well, not human anyway. Instead they project their caring instincts onto their pets. Sort of a Chinese version of :
“Love me, Love my dog.” ( or cat, rabbit, llama, donkey)
This has spilled over to travel, especially the current craze of “Glamping” where pets have their own little tepees, back backs etc.
#3 Environmental concerns
This tends to continue the burgeoning Chinese concern generally for the environment. Today’s younger Chinese consumers are looking for environmentally friendly construction, biodegradability etc in their consumer products. We are skeptical of this, or at least the motives and suspect it is more about show and will not last long.
#4 Ready made meals
Whilst their parents generation may have been content to order takeaways, kit-set or read made meals are a growing trend. Think TV dinners -sort of. (we may look at this trend in more detail next month.)
Today’s ready made meals come in a “Glamping” version, nicely presented. Ideal for sitting on top of ones designer camp stove, taking selfies or photos to share with ones WeChat circles!
#5 No Alcohol
As you might guess from our heading, the shift away from alcohol to either natural drinks or low alcohol wine, beer etc.
So there we have it. To read the entire Alibaba article, with more indepth detail, research and stats just follow this link:
No Alcohol Please! Top 5 Lifestyle Trends Among China’s Gen Z Reshaping Retail
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