China's home-grown products increasingly popular among consumers

High-quality "made in China" products are becoming increasingly popular among Chinese consumers, especially young ones.

A woman buys beauty products inspired by cultural relics collected in the Palace Museum in a mall in Shapingba district, southwest China's Chongqing municipality, Oct. 4, 2021. (People's Daily Online/Sun Kaifang)

According to a report on guochao - a term describing a fashion trend that translates as "China-chic" - released by Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, new guochao brands and home-grown brands accelerated their embrace of e-commerce in 2021. Last year, the number of such brands joining Pinduoduo surged over 270 percent year on year, including 327 brands each with a value of more than 100 million yuan (about $13.9 million), the report said.

A report issued by the JD Research Institute for Consumption and Industrial Development under Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com showed that since the beginning of this year, young consumers have purchased more Chinese products than ever before. Among consumers of home-grown brands with a certain sales volume, the proportion of those born after 1995 grew 11 percent year on year.

JD's report said young consumers are integrating traditional Chinese culture into their daily lives through diversified guochao consumption. Data showed that purchases of products that incorporated "Chinese red," a culturally auspicious color, by consumers born after 1995 had increased more than threefold since the beginning of this year.

Research data also indicated that 59.5 percent of the Chinese consumers surveyed were optimistic about the future development of China's home-grown products.

The robust development of China's economy over the past 40-plus years has laid a good foundation for the rise of domestic products, especially in recent years, as China has made significant progress in brand building.

The rise of home-grown brands can be attributed to consumers' national pride and cultural confidence, improvements in the quality, design, technologies and innovation capacity of Chinese products and brands, as well as strong support from supply chains, logistics, big data, the Internet and other new infrastructure facilities, said Guo Haiyan, chief consumer analyst at China International Capital Corporation Limited.

Consumers prefer to buy high-quality and economical domestic products, which in turn incentivizes enterprises to improve the quality and reputation of their products.

Chinese enterprises' brand building is indispensable for the accelerated rise of domestic brands, said Guo Guoqing, director of the China Marketing Research Center at Renmin University of China.

Chinese companies tap market demand and bring an immersive shopping experience to customers, Guo noted, adding that they are also grasping new trends in consumer behavior to meet consumers' individual needs while upgrading their traditional products.

Tapping market demand and enhancing enterprises' capabilities to respond to changes in market demand and make adjustments accordingly hold the key to the steady development of domestic products, according to one expert.

The expert believes that domestic brands will drive China's economic development in the future and suggests leveraging policies to encourage Chinese enterprises to gradually improve the quality of their products and build their brands through innovation.