In recent years, factors such as fertility policies, rising incomes, and upgrading of consumption concepts have promoted the rapid development of China’s maternal and infant market. However, with the differences in culture, consumption habits, and markets, how can overseas merchants better and faster seize the Chinese market? We might as well start to explore the status quo of China’s maternal and child market.
Maternal and child e-commerce rises against the trend, new changes are worth noting
In 2021, under the influence of the epidemic, many industries have entered a period of sluggishness or even regression. However, the maternal and infant industry in China has not declined but increased. The reason is that the epidemic has prompted the digital transformation of the maternal and child industry, and maternal and child e-commerce has bucked the trend. Offline maternal and child stores turn to online stores, and online stores turn to social communities. This is an important feature of China’s maternal and child industry in the past two years.
Based on this, it is not difficult for us to find that China’s maternal and infant market still has great potential, but changes cannot be ignored too.
Younger parents, more avant-garde consumption concepts
According to data from iResearch, the group of pregnant mothers has begun to lean towards the post-95s and even post-00s. Their consumption concepts are more avant-garde. Both for infants and young children, pregnant mothers themselves, or the consumption needs of family layout, they have shown more diversified needs.
On the other hand, the proportion of parents with a bachelor’s degree or above has reached 66% of the overall population. They prefer scientific raising and are more willing to spend money on their children. They also prefer “imports” products.
Highly concerned about information, consumption before pregnant is a trend.
Compared with traditional generations, modern parents prefer science more. Their demand for knowledge about pregnancy and parenting continues to increase, and the learning cycle continues to grow. Data show that in 2021, 53% of the mother-infant population in China will be exposed to mother-infant information and related products from the pregnancy period. As the stages of maternal and infant consumption continue to advance, early-stage groups have gradually become a new force in maternal and infant consumption, with great marketing value.
Self-pleasing consumption expenditures increase in new mothers
With the popularization of scientific pregnancy and scientific parenting concepts, new parents, especially new mothers, pay more attention to themselves. Health products have gradually become necessities for early-stage groups. Skin care cosmetics during pregnancy and postpartum products have also become popular in China. According to data from iiMedia Research, most pregnant mothers consume between 10%-30% of self-care products during pregnancy, and a small number of pregnant mothers spend more on such consumption.
Social community + WeChat mall, a new growth model for the maternal and child industry
Young parents are increasingly demanding knowledge about pregnancy and childcare, related books and baby platforms have become learning places for many young parents. But just learning is not enough. In the process of new life growth, there are always various problems, and novice parents often feel overwhelmed. Therefore, a community that has timeliness, interactivity and a sense of belonging can become an important communication channel for many young parents. In the community, everyone can share parenting experiences, talk about parenting experiences and feelings, or complain about the hardships of babysitting. At present, the WeChat ecosystem covers the main social community of new parents.
Thanks to the sense of belonging and trust of members in the community, the community is a precise traffic pool for maternal and child products. Many community operations have found that the ‘mother and child community + WeChat mini program store’ is the growth weapon.
Merchants can use the SAAS system to build their own independent mini program store relying on the WeChat ecosystem. Compared with the APP, WeChat store can directly contact WeChat’s daily active users of more than 1 billion. More importantly, WeChat store can directly share and purchases in the WeChat group, without downloading or jumping to other apps.
Therefore, community operations have become a new growth driver for the maternal and infant industry. Moreover, new parents are suitable for being a community. Through member accumulation, the social community will output value continuously.
The positioning of the maternal and infant community is actually very clear, that is: the marketing and promotion of maternal and infant products are the mainstay, and the knowledge sharing of parenting knowledge are supplemented by content. Compared with other fields, the characteristics and labels of the consumer population in the maternal and infant industry are very obvious, and consumers can be accurately labelled through content and community operation, which is conducive to subsequent targeted product recommendations and can greatly increase the repurchase rate.
The private domain traffic advantage is already obvious to all. The “social community + WeChat store” model has become a new growth driver for the maternal and child industry. And the practice of this model helped maternal and child retailers to achieve rapid growth in customer and daily sales.