In recent years China’s Maternity and Infant Care industry has been rapidly growing, partially fueled by China’s two-child policy. Other factors are accelerated urbanization, increases in income and a willingness by working moms to take care of themselves and children with high quality products. For the last three years the market was growing on average 15% YoY, and with the growing demand for infant milk, baby diet supplements, baby clothing, baby care and maternity products, this year the online parenting and infant market will reach a huge USD 423 billion.
During the COVID-19 outbreak many families re-evaluated their family life routines and changed their attitude towards the baby care processes and products they use on a daily basis. Rising awareness of global public health security this year along with the large scale digitisation of traditional offline channels boosted the consumption demand for high quality products. A primary question Chinese parents have is about “which brands can we trust?”, while companies aim on showing empathy and building stronger trust bases during this uncertain time. Although the Maternity and Infant Care industry has been greatly affected by COVID-19, chaos also bring new opportunities for market players.
What will you learn about?
- Understanding the changes in parental mindsets and how they influence consumer behaviour
- Insights on how the trends changed in the Chinese maternity and infant care market because of COVID-19
- Insights on the impact on parental purchasing decisions during COVID-19
- Understanding of the products which are going popular and which are going down during COVID-19
- Understanding the products that rose in popularity and those that fell in popularity during COVID-19
- Ideas on how brands in China can adjust their strategies to win during COVID-19
- Examples of the most effective distribution channels for the maternity and infant care industry in China
- Successful case studies in the industry
- Checklist with actions that you can apply in your China marketing plan
What affects Chinese parental purchasing decisions?
With an increasing number of parents born after the 90s, we can see how new generations of young parents are more reliant on online information. According to iiMedia Research the number of users of online parenting platforms reached 204 million in 2019 and most of them not only obtain information from the internet, they also purchase products on the same platforms they get parenting advice.
Among a variety of factors, WeChat affects parental purchasing decisions the most with information obtained from WeChat official accounts, group chats and KOL’s posts. According to iiMedia Research, word-of-mouth convinces Chinese parents to make purchasing decisions, 55.6% put peer experience and KOL recommendations in highest regard, and then consider more immediate decisions such as brand names/reputations, price and product origins. The COVID-19 outbreak increased the anxiety levels of Chinese parents pushing them to use social media as an outlet to share advice, frustrations and other experiences.
COVID-19 has brought significant changes to family daily life. What are the changes in parental mindsets? Has it influenced their consumption habits? What products are facing a new opportunity? How can brands capture these new opportunities and win in 2020?
What and where Chinese parents buy during COVID-19?
In China, there are hundreds of different social media platforms, and apart from the most known; WeChat and Weibo, Chinese parents also like to use ones specifically focused on the parenting experience. Among the most popular are Baby Trees, Qinbaobao, Mamawangqingliao, and Mamabang, post 90s mothers also like to communicate on RED (Xiaohongshu). During COVID -19 Chinese moms have spent more time on these platforms discussing children’s health care and epidemic prevention, and, as most of the kindergartens and schools were closed meant childhood education was also a top topic.
In the Maternity and Infant industry, word-of-mouth is the crucial element for Chinese parental purchasing decisions. On social media platforms mothers create special groups to purchase and promote the most trustworthy baby-related brands.
During COVID-19 the most popular products are baby toys, baby online entertainment content such as cartoons or educational programs, and baby nutrition supplements. The potential of the baby nutrition supplement market hasn’t yet been fully realised. According to iiMedia, 22.7% of parents are currently making infant supplementary food by themselves, although, as working parents they are experiencing shortcomings with time. When purchasing, safety is the top priority for them and they pay attention to quality variations. In future, they want to see improvements in product safety and nutrition. Brands have opportunities to address these concerns and win consumers hearts.
Chinese parents are also active users of e-commerce platforms. Among the most popular platforms to buy baby-related products are baby.tmall.com and JD.com, as well as vertical e-commerce platforms such as xiaoshuxiong.com, mia.com, and meitun.com which belongs to Baby Tree. Vertical e-commerce platforms focus on specific categories where parents can compare brands easily and get the needed products.
About the Webinar
Topic: How COVID-19 changed the maternity and infant care industry in China and how to win in 2020
Speakers: Wendy Chen, Fan Lu
Check out this webinar right now to get the most actionable insights! You can also visit our ChoZan webinar playlist on YouTube to check out our entire webinar series.
For access to the presentation slides of the webinar, please click here.
About the Speakers
Wendy Chen, Head of Digital Products at ChoZan
Wendy has over 2 years of experience in social media marketing projects. She helps brands understand how to leverage Weibo and niche platforms like Bilibili, Kuaishou, and Mafengwo. She closely tracks social media trends and as an expert on creative media campaigns, Wendy has lots of insights on KOLs and China’s fan economy. As a digital marketing trainer at ChoZan, Wendy has trained multinational clients from the FMCG, fashion and lifestyle sector. Through our exclusive China Marketing Circle, Wendy digs into the latest trends, insights and case studies related to modern Chinese consumers and shares them weekly with hundreds of brands and China watchers.
Fan Lu, Head of Strategy Projects at ChoZan
Fan is an experienced China Digital Marketing strategist. She helps multinational brands to understand and communicate with their consumers by conducting market research and developing China marketing strategies in digital space. Fan has deep understanding of successful campaign execution on social media platforms and how to most effectively use marketing budgets for cooperation with KOLs.
Get in touch with our ChoZan team to see how we can help you with your China marketing strategies, be it paid advertising campaigns or custom corporate training, we are happy to help!
