In 2019, members of private urban households in Shanghai were found to have the largest per capita expenditure on products such as food, tobacco, and liquor totaling 11 thousand yuan. Meanwhile, alongside an increase in disposable incomes, and expenditure across the region, the sales value of fast-moving consumer goods in the country grew by nearly 50 percent between 2012 and 2019. With supermarkets and hypermarkets holding the largest share of the retail sales value of FMCG products, Century Hualian, Lianhua, and Vanguard supermarkets had the highest number of stores in China.
Over the years between 2014 and 2019, e-commerce has become a growing trend with online retail holding more than a 22 percent share in the FMCG retail market in 2019. Fresh food was one of the quickest developing sectors within online retail. The month of December in 2019 recorded approximately 50 million consumers purchasing fresh food from the most popular e-commerce companies. Online shoppers claimed to find grocery shopping most convenient on e-commerce platforms and were usually quite satisfied with product delivery services as well as food safety aspects.
The coronavirus outbreak at the beginning of 2020 accelerated the digitalization of grocery shopping in China. According to a survey, around 84 percent of the Chinese consumers increased their online shopping frequency during the pandemic, and more than 20 percent increased their online shopping spending. Meanwhile, a growing number of Chinese consumers chose to shop groceries on JD.com during the lockdown, owing to its integrated logistic system.
