Economic Daily-China Economic Net Beijing July 19 (Reporter Ma Changyan) This sudden outbreak has brought many impacts and changes to people's lives, and also changed people's consumption methods-offline shopping accelerated to online transfer . Official data show that the nationwide online retail sales exceeded 5 trillion yuan in the first half of the year. Quickly open your phone and see how much did you spend on online shopping in the first half of the year?
Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on the 16th showed that in the first half of the year, online retail sales nationwide were 5,151.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%, and a decrease of 0.8% in the first quarter. Among them, the online retail sales of physical commodities was 4,348.1 billion yuan, an increase of 14.3%, an increase of 8.4 percentage points from the first quarter; the proportion of total retail sales of social consumer goods was 25.2%, an increase of 1.6 percentage points from the first quarter.
Lu Haiqi, director of the Institute of Statistical Sciences of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that my country's “Internet+” has been promoted in depth, and the network infrastructure support capability has continued to improve, providing effective protection for the development of the network economy. The advantages of the digital economy are prominent, and network consumption continues to be active.
"The epidemic has further enhanced consumers' online consumption habits, and the growth and proportion of online consumption have continued to increase, becoming the biggest highlight of consumption growth in the first half of the year." Zhao Ping, director of the International Trade Research Department of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said that online Consumption has also spawned new consumption models such as community e-commerce, social e-commerce, and community e-commerce, thereby effectively unlocking the potential of online consumption.
The epidemic has increased the time for people to live in their homes, which has spurred the rapid development of the "home economy", making online consumption continue to be active, and new models such as live streaming and online grouping have emerged. In order to promote consumption, more than 170 prefectures and cities in my country issued consumer vouchers in the first half of the year. Tmall, JD.com, Suning, Pinduoduo and other e-commerce platforms also launched a large number of consumer vouchers.
It is worth noting that under the influence of the epidemic, not only has offline shopping accelerated to online, but outbound services have also been replaced by online services to a certain extent. For example, people watch movies online instead of going to the cinema, listening to music online instead of listening to live concerts, and online education has replaced classroom education more.
Peng Wensheng, chief economist of CICC, pointed out that the new crown pneumonia epidemic has a negative impact on consumption. The development of e-commerce and logistics has enabled more and more shopping to be completed online, and the consumption of outbound shopping and outbound services has decreased, while online shopping And online service consumption increased.
The volume of express delivery business in the first half of the year also reflected the popularity of online shopping in the first half of the year. The "China Express Development Index Report for June 2020" released by the State Post Bureau on the 9th shows that in the first half of the year, it is expected to complete a total of about 34 billion pieces of express delivery business, an increase of more than 22% year-on-year.
The rapid growth of online consumption in my country is behind the continuous growth of online shopping users. The 45th "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet" released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) shows that as of March 2020, China's online shopping users reached 710 million, an increase of 16.4% from the end of 2018, accounting for the overall netizens' 78.6%.
Experts expect that online consumption will further expand in the future. Zhao Ping said that with the popularization of the new generation of information technology applications, relevant national policy support will further ensure the continuous emergence of new formats and models of online consumption, and online consumption will remain high in the future.