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On August 8, when introducing the development of the national online retail market in the first half of 2019, the person in charge of the e-commerce department said that in the first half of 2019, my country's online retail market maintained rapid growth, and the national online retail sales reached 4.82 trillion billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.8 percent. An increase of 2.5 percentage points in the first quarter. Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods were 3.82 trillion billion yuan, an increase of 21.6 percent, accounting for 19.6 percent of the total retail sales of consumer goods, an increase of 1.4 percentage points over the first quarter, and the contribution rate to the growth of social zero elimination reached 44.8 percent, an increase of 3.6 percentage points over the first quarter. It plays a growing role in stimulating demand potential and expanding domestic consumption.

The person in charge said that in the first half of the year, my country's online retail market showed the following characteristics:

First, the trend of upgrading consumption is obvious. According to business big data monitoring, the proportion of online retail B2C mode is increasing. B2C retail sales accounted for 75.8 percent of the country's online retail sales, up 4.1 percentage points from a year earlier. Cosmetics, smart home, health care products and other consumer upgrade goods sales increased rapidly, year-on-year growth rate of more than 30%. More than 100000 brands participated in the first "double-product online shopping festival", with sales reaching 77 billion yuan, up more than 32% year on year. New products to speed up the market, the core brand of the main e-commerce platform, more than 80% in this year's "618" period released new products, sales of more than one million pieces.

Second, there are differences in regional consumption hotspots. According to business big data monitoring, in the first half of the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions accounted for 83.2 percent, 9.6 percent, 5.9 percent and 1.3 percent of the country's online retail sales, respectively; year-on-year growth rates were 17.8 percent, 35.4 percent, 13.9 percent and 20.6 percent, respectively. Different regions present different consumption hotspots. Retail sales of fresh food, cosmetics, and pet products in big cities have grown rapidly, and retail sales of clothing, automotive products, and major appliances in small and medium-sized cities and rural areas have grown rapidly.

Third, the development potential of rural e-commerce is large. With the in-depth advancement of digital rural construction, comprehensive demonstration of e-commerce in rural areas, and online poverty alleviation, the growth rate of rural online retail has been accelerating, and e-commerce poverty alleviation has shown results. According to business big data monitoring, the national rural online retail sales reached 777.13 billion billion yuan in the first half of the year, an increase of 21.0 percent over the same period last year, and the growth rate was 3.2 percentage points higher than that of the whole country. The national online retail sales of agricultural products amounted to 187.36 billion billion yuan, up 25.3 percent year on year. The Ministry of Commerce guided the China E-commerce Poverty Alleviation Alliance to actively carry out agricultural product brand promotion work, and completed the "three products and one standard" certification training for 464 agricultural product brand enterprises in poverty-stricken areas, and 129 are undergoing certification. Online retail sales in poor counties nationwide reached 65.98 billion yuan, up 18.0 percent year-on-year.

Fourth, cross-border e-commerce has maintained rapid growth. Business big data monitoring shows that in the first half of this year, the retail imports of major cross-border e-commerce platforms increased by more than 20% year-on-year. In terms of source origin, imports from Japan, the United States and South Korea ranked in the top three, accounting for 19.1 per cent, 13.9 per cent and 10.7 per cent, respectively. In terms of categories, imports of cosmetics, grain, oil and food and daily necessities ranked in the top three, accounting for 34.8 per cent, 24.7 per cent and 9.6 per cent, respectively.

Fifth, the integration of e-commerce and entities is closer. In the first half of the year, the integration of online and entities developed in the direction of being close to consumers and improving operational efficiency. Many e-commerce platforms strengthen open empowerment, focus on the layout of the sinking market, integrate into the community ecology, and achieve good results. The social e-commerce model is more diversified, with community groups, acquaintances, live broadcasts, forums, short videos, etc. competing to develop, fully meeting the differentiated needs of consumers and promoting the continuous release of consumption potential.

(Source: Department of Commerce)