Chinese policy is usually a barometer for businesses and Chinese consumer behaviour, and the latest Healthy China Action Plan 2019-2030 is no exception.

Check out China Skinny's infographic on Pinduoduo (PDD). Discover how PDD captured the underserved masses to become China's third largest online retailer

Marketers, sales managers, product developers and strategists the world over are increasingly using data to help form decisions. Fortunately in China, we have a greater depth and breadth of data than anywhere else. Not only do Chinese use their smartphones (and faces) more frequently, across a broader array of online and offline occasions, they are also among the least concerned about data privacy globally. China Skinny uses our own in-house tools to tap into China’s vast banks of data to provide macro and granular views of consumers’ preferences and trends. These can impact everything from communications, branding and product development, to the channels and influencers you use.

As protests in Hong Kong enter their 10th week, the violence continues to intensify, leading to Monday’s closure and yesterday’s mass cancellations at the eighth busiest airport in the world. Many miles away, some of the world’s most aspirational brands are having their own set of issues recognising the Special Administrative Region.

In 2012 in the city of Wuhu, Anhui, a former street vendor and motorcycle taxi operator named Liaoyuan Zhang, left his job selling nuts to start his own nut company. In just 65 days, the company – Three Squirrels – became the top selling nuts brand on Tmall and within a couple of years, was said to be the top-selling food brand online. On Singles’ Day last year, it took less than 10 minutes to sell ¥100 million ($14.2 million) worth of snacks. The recently-listed company now has a market cap of close to $3 billion.

In July 2017, Beijing set the target to make China “the world’s primary AI (Artificial Intelligence) innovation centre” by 2030. Whilst a detailed plan didn’t accompany the goal, it sent a message reinforcing how serious China is about AI. Such a signal is almost always accompanied by investment, policy and supporting regulations (or lack thereof) from Central Government. In early 2018, eagle-eyed Chinese spotted AI-related books on Xi Jinping’s bookshelf, highlighting that the mandate is being supported from the very top.

To mark seven years of writing the Skinny Newsletter, we’ve put together seven key trends which we believe are important to consider when marketing to Chinese consumers. These are trends that we have seen forming through researching for and writing the newsletter every week since 2012, in addition to the projects that we’ve worked on with almost 200 brands.

A little over seven years ago, our fledging little marketing agency wrote its first Weekly Skinny. The topics of the day were common myths about Chinese consumers, the importance of female consumers, food scandals, fakes and 300 million+ users on Weibo. On the surface, the subject matters weren’t too different from those today. Yet open the hood and you see a Chinese consumer, national swagger and marketing landscape that is almost unrecognisable from 2012.

Sleep deprivation, oh how horrible. It’s the giveaway sign of new parents or someone trying to juggle a demanding job with study or other extracurriculars. It’s also increasingly likely to affect Chinese consumers.

Last week, a man surnamed Cheng burst onto the stage at Baidu’s AI conference and upended a bottle of water over Baidu’s CEO Robin Li. Cheng’s bold act was applauded by many online patrons and was representative of how many Chinese consumers have become frustrated with the performance, ethics and privacy from China’s leading search engine; particularly as the Googles of the world are shut out.

On the surface, Chinese consumers appear to be some of the most environmentally-conscious consumers in the world. For years, high profile studies have praised Chinese consumer’s sustainability habits, such as the National Geographic’s 2014 Greendex which ranked China second globally for its consumers’ environmental behaviour, applauding their high public transport and scooter use, and consumption of locally grown food.

If you were peddling your products in Los Angeles and Chicago, there’s a good chance that you’d need to tweak the marketing strategy to account for differing lifestyles, varying tastes, disparate climates, different sales channels and varied cultural and emotional needs. In China, variations between cities are typically even greater.

It doesn’t have the sexiness of livestreaming, or the sizzle of Singles’ Day, but one of the most important components of China’s ecommerce and New Retail boom is the thankless task of making it all happen behind the scenes. China’s logistics infrastructure is experiencing some of the biggest, yet behind-the-scenes, changes in the country’s retail industry. Chinese logistics are evolving from fragmented and rudimentary systems, to consolidated ones driven by the internet-connected smart devices, robots and real-time end-to-end tracking and traceability.

WeChat now boasts 1.1 billion active users, with most being in China. That’s great news for Tencent who have prodigious insights into the online, offline and commerce behaviour of a large swath of Chinese consumers. Yet its almost-100% saturation of China’s online population also presents challenges to Tencent, who is having to shift its strategy from growth by acquisition to extending the utility of WeChat and its data. To make things tougher, AI-driven competitors such as Douyin are cannibalising the screen time users spend on WeChat through services that are easier to use and more entertaining.

Remember when you’d see the big tricycles stacked metres high with polystyrene, rubbish and furniture cruising the streets? Or the vividly-coloured Facekinis poolside or on the beach? Or how about the infants with split pants on a cold Beijing day? They were all China novelties that have largely disappeared from the bigger cities. Yet with each disappearing quirk, a new curiosity has arisen to ensure that there is never a dull day in China.

China is famous worldwide for its unique consumer trends, here’s a review of some of the ones we found interesting in 2015 courtesy of Victoria Richardson. From ‘Face-Kinis’, to the ‘Belly Button Challenge’, to weird and wacky fashion fads, Chinese consumer culture is always throwing up new ideas and products which can prove puzzling to the outside observer. But what can these unusual trends teach us about China’s rapidly evolving consumer dynamics? – It turns out a lot! Read on to learn more…

One of the giveaways of a newbie to China is the bafflement about being unable to access Google, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter – unless they’re chewing through their data roaming quotas or have planned ahead with a VPN. It quickly becomes apparent that China’s digital ecosystem is unlike anywhere else in the world.

Food exports to China have been growing for some years now. Chinese consumers are known to pay a premium for foreign food and beverage as it is perceived to be safer and healthier, more prestigious and having interesting, unique varieties to feed their inherent curiosity. Yet one of the big drivers for shipping food from afar is that in many cases, they are actually cheaper and meet a demand that local produce can’t serve.