China Unionpay & JD Finance unveiled big data report on 2017 consumption upgrade

China Unionpay published a report on the latest trend of domestic consumption upgrading today together with JD Finance, the financial arm of a major e-commerce player JD.com Inc.

The report randomly selected 400,000 active sample users of those two groups and tracked their behavior of consumption during the past three years.

The report finds that people born after the 1970s are still the primary contributors to consumption, contributing nearly half of the total daily consumption of the post-70s, post-80s and post-90s in the past three years.

The younger generation saw a rapid growth of spending during the surveyed period, doubling that of the post-70s. And money spent through mobile and Internet channels accounts for more than half of their daily consumption expenditure.

There was a rapid rise of consumption from the second, third and fourth-tier cities. In 2017, the consumption growth rate from those areas was close to 1.5 times of that of the first-tier cities and the trend is set to carry on, according to the report.

As for per capita consumption, the post-80s rank the first, while that number for the post-90s almost tripled within the past three years. The report said that shopping, catering and entertainment are the main scenarios of daily consumption, with shopping accounting for nearly half of the daily expenditure.

Domestic brands are gaining more popularity, with mobile phones, smart equipment, online fresh products and health care equipment the most pursued items. The report noted that people now are looking for more quality goods instead of the previous emphasis on good price for value.