Consumption Analysis: Insight Into Consumer Behavior Trend In Market Sampling Survey

The changing international situation, the new coronavirus and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine have plunged the global economy into a quagmire. The trend of de globalization in the United States and the rise of emerging economies have hindered the rapid development of foreign trade for many years, which is one of the troikas driving China's economy. In this way, the domestic demand market, another driving force of the economy, is more and more valued, and the country is also vigorously promoting the new pattern of dual cycle development. Especially in the textile and clothing industry, under the influence of labor cost increase and other factors, the export-oriented development becomes more and more difficult, and the domestic demand market further becomes the focus of future development.

In order to understand the actual demand situation and consumption trend of China's textile and garment terminal market, and the impact of the new epidemic situation on consumers' consumption ability and consumption habits, the Shanghai Office of China Textile Industry Federation and Donghua University jointly conducted a sampling survey on terminal consumption. The survey objects are ordinary consumers in mainland China. The survey methods are online questionnaires and offline field visits to individual consumers. The survey includes personal consumption status, consumption habits, the impact of the epidemic situation and views on the future market. We hope that through this investigation, we can provide reference for judging the business environment of the textile and clothing industry in the second half of the year.

A total of 2427 samples were collected. All 31 provinces and autonomous regions in China were covered by the survey. The occupations of the respondents covered all kinds of occupations, ranging from under 18 years old to over 60 years old, and most of them were concentrated in the age stage of active consumption between 25 and 50 years old. The questionnaire is mainly divided into three parts: the first is the basic information of the respondents; the second is the survey of the consumption of the respondents; the third is the investigation of the impact of Xinguan epidemic.

　　 1、 Basic information of the respondents

According to the basic information of the respondents, 41.12% were male and 58.88% were female; In terms of educational background, 79.77% of them have college degree or above; Age, 25-50 years old accounted for 67.61%. Therefore, most of the investigated samples are the main consumer groups, which can objectively reflect the actual situation of the terminal consumers.

According to the income of the respondents, most of the family income is between 5000 yuan and 25000 yuan, accounting for 67.66%. According to the survey on the income of consumers in the past year, 34.07% of the people said that their income was declining this year, which was 17.19% higher than the survey data of last year, and was basically the same as the survey data of the outbreak of the new epidemic in 2020. The proportion of respondents who said their income increased was 21.26%, 12.42 percentage points lower than that of last year, and only 1.19% said that their income had increased significantly. This shows that the impact of the new epidemic on the income of ordinary people is great. The repeated outbreak of the new crown epidemic has prompted many places in China to take measures of containment. Transportation and logistics are blocked, and people are not allowed to go out at home. Many factories can only choose to shut down and stop production. Therefore, most industries are seriously impacted and people's income is greatly affected.

　　 2、 Consumption survey

The survey of consumption mainly includes three aspects. The first is consumption channels, the second is consumption capacity, and the third is consumption habits. From the statistical data, we can get the following information:

1. From the perspective of consumption channels, online shopping has become the most important shopping channel for consumers. In this year's survey, 48.17% of the respondents said that their main way to buy clothing was through online shopping. Both the high-income group and the elderly people have taken online shopping as their main channel to buy clothes. It shows that online shopping has become the main channel for most people to buy clothes. In the past three years, this proportion has been maintained around 48% - 50%. Therefore, it also shows that the rise of online shopping proportion has fallen into a bottleneck period because of the limitations of online shopping for clothing, such as lack of touch and intuitive feeling. Among the respondents, 71.25% of the respondents were from department stores. The other two channels are clothing stores, accounting for 16.40%; Clothing wholesale market 9.72%. From the distribution of different consumption channels in different groups, the respondents who choose online shopping are mainly concentrated in the young group, those who choose department stores are mainly concentrated in the elderly group, while those who choose wholesale markets and exclusive stores to buy clothes are more evenly distributed among the age groups. For people with different incomes, in addition to online shopping, high-income people also tend to shop in clothing stores. Among the respondents whose monthly household income is more than 40000, 37.50% of them choose to shop in clothing stores.

2. According to the consumption pattern of clothing customization, through the investigation in recent years, it has been stable at a certain proportion. In the survey, 7.05% of the respondents said they had customized clothes in the past year. This shows that there is a certain consumer group of customized clothing, but the development in recent years is not very fast, which may need to change the consumption concept and habits. From the category of clothing customization, the most important category is suit and other formal clothes, followed by cheongsam, skirt and other women's clothing. In this survey, the respondents also customized Chinese traditional clothing such as Han Fu and personalized clothing such as cosplay, which shows that clothing customization is also developing in a diversified way.

3. Online live delivery with goods is a new consumption mode, which has developed rapidly in recent years. In this survey, 94.23% of the people said they knew or understood this shopping mode, 18.21% of them said they were very concerned about it, and 13.60% said that they had already consumed through live network with goods. From the data point of view, in last year's survey, the data had a significant increase, while this year's data was basically the same as last year's, or even slightly decreased. This shows that 2021 is a year of rapid development of live broadcasting with goods. This year, the development of live delivery may enter a bottleneck period.

4. From the perspective of the frequency of consumers' buying clothes, most of the respondents chose once every three months, accounting for 37.33%. In the past years, most people choose to shop once a month. This shows that the shopping frequency of consumers is decreasing, and the consumption ability is also declining.

5. From the perspective of monthly expenditure on clothing, most people spend less than 1000 yuan, accounting for 79.15%, of which 11.78% are under 100 yuan, 30.00% are 100-300 yuan, and 37.37% are 300-1000 yuan. Compared with previous years, the number of people with low expenditure is increasing. In terms of the price of clothing items purchased, the price of clothing purchased by most people is 100-300 yuan / piece, accounting for 42.69%, followed by 300-1000 yuan / piece, which is 34.40%.

6. According to the survey of consumers' total expenditure on clothing, 51.63% of the respondents said that the expenditure on clothing was reduced this year, which was 17.31% higher than that of last year. Of them, 27.27% were significantly lower than that of last year. This shows that affected by the epidemic situation, people's consumption capacity has been greatly reduced.

7. In the survey, we learned about the consumers' spending on online shopping. According to the data, 39.56% of the respondents said that their online shopping spending had decreased this year, an increase of 15.86% over last year. More 21.55% of the respondents said that online shopping expenses had been greatly reduced, an increase of 11.21 percentage points over last year. Combined with the survey of consumer shopping channels and overall consumption expenditure, the decrease of online shopping expenses should not be due to the change of consumption channels, but the decline of consumers' consumption ability.

8. In the survey of the primary factors that affect the purchase of clothing, 50.10% of people think that the style of clothing is the primary factor affecting their purchase of clothing. From the survey and statistics over the years, style has been the most important factor affecting consumers to buy clothing. In addition, 34.03% of the respondents believed that the price was the primary factor, an increase of 1.75% over last year. In the past three years, this proportion has been increasing, indicating that consumers are becoming more sensitive to prices.

9. In the survey on the problems existing in clothing design, production and sales, the feedback results have not changed much compared with previous years. The two problems most criticized by consumers are the high price of clothing and the lack of individuality in fashion design, accounting for 49.61% and 40.34% respectively. The proportion of people who think that the price is too high has increased greatly, This should also prove that the current consumer sensitivity to price is increasing.

10. In terms of brand recognition, domestic brands are still recognized by most consumers, with 66.5% of respondents saying they approve of domestic brands. The biggest advantage of domestic brands is the price advantage. In the survey, 67.99% of the respondents think so.

11. For the second half of the year, 42.03% of the respondents said that the budget would be reduced, an increase of 15.24% over last year. Among them, the proportion of respondents who thought that the budget would be significantly reduced reached 22.83%, an increase of 11.3 percentage points over last year. Among the respondents, only 9.77% said the budget would increase, a decrease of 2.96 percentage points compared with last year. This shows that the follow-up domestic demand for textiles and clothing is not optimistic.

　　 3、 Impact of Xinguan epidemic

This year, the outbreak of Xinguan epidemic occurred again and again in many places in China, which prompted the government to take a number of control measures, which had a great impact on the life of residents and the development of various economic activities, and also seriously affected the income and consumption of ordinary people.

1. In terms of income, 79.56% of the respondents said that the epidemic had an impact on their income. Among them, 43.88% said that they had a small impact, which was basically the same as last year; 26.91% of the respondents said that they had a greater impact, which was 6.38 percentage points higher than last year; 4.4% of the total number of people last year, representing a significant increase of 78%.

2. In the survey on whether there was unemployment due to the epidemic situation in their families, 25.63% of the respondents reported that there was unemployment in their families due to the epidemic situation, which was 6.71% higher than that of last year.

3. According to the survey of consumption desire during the epidemic period, 21.38% of the people said they had no consumption desire, which was 8.44% higher than that of last year; 46.72% of the respondents said that their consumption decreased, which was 7.55% higher than that of last year; The proportion of people who said they would normally consume was 29.01%, which was 14.38 percentage points lower than last year; The proportion of people who said they would increase consumption was 2.88%, a decrease of 1.62 percentage points over last year.

4. According to the survey on the categories of clothes purchased by consumers during the epidemic period, 31.64% of the respondents reported that they did not buy clothes, an increase of 9.7% over last year. Among the people who have bought clothes, the main categories of clothing purchased are sportswear and home wear.

5. On the issue of whether there will be retaliatory consumption on clothing after the epidemic, 76.47% of the people said they would not, which was 1.59% lower than last year; 16.44% said they would, an increase of 3.22 percentage points over last year; The other 7.09% said they were not clear.

6. For the views of people on the trend of domestic economic situation after the epidemic, 18.71% of the respondents expressed pessimism, which increased by 13.72% year-on-year; The proportion of people who said they were very pessimistic accounted for 8.9%, up 6.44 percentage points year on year; The proportion of people who expressed optimism was 32.92%, down 20.39 percentage points year on year; The proportion of people who said they were optimistic was 6.55%, down 9.41 percentage points year on year; The other 32.92% of the respondents did not know.

Summary:

As the primary factor of clothing, food, housing and transportation, textile and clothing plays an important role in people's consumption expenditure. Textile and clothing market is also affected by consumer consumption channels, consumption ability and consumption habits.

In recent years, the convenience of online shopping has made it the most important channel for people to buy clothes. However, due to the lack of touch and intuitive feeling, it can not replace all the clothing purchasing methods, so its development in clothing sales has fallen into a bottleneck period. The department store is still a channel in clothing sales. At the same time, in different consumer groups, there are still different preferences for consumption channels, such as high-income groups for some quality clothing purchase is more inclined to brand stores. However, the development of custom-made clothing market still needs to cultivate consumers' consumption concept and habits.

As a result, consumers' consumption ability and desire to reduce clothing consumption are not as high as expected. Moreover, people's optimism about the future economic trend is declining, so the overall expenditure budget is also declining. This is a big disadvantage for the later textile and clothing market. In other words, the domestic demand market of textile and clothing may decline. Although people's desire for consumption has been suppressed by the epidemic, retaliatory consumption may occur after the end of the epidemic. However, we should not expect such a rebound.

(source: Shanghai Office of China Textile Industry Federation)