Predicting the changing tastes of China’s consumers is becoming easier thanks to the country’s e-commerce giants, who monitor sales that can exceed US$17 billion in a single day.
The country’s second-biggest web-based retail platform, JD.com Inc, already has dozens of new indexes tracking sales of products from liquor to appliances. Larger rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd plans to publish its own spending gauges in coming months.
Their data is vital to large global companies like Starbucks Corp and Wal-Mart Stores Inc that are looking for insights into what’s hot among China’s billion-plus consumers. Online shopping indexes reflect millions of transactions daily, whereas traditional consumer surveys can only test a tiny sample.
“The ability to analyse and understand trends in online consumption has never been more important or more valuable,” said James Huang, big-data analytics director for the finance unit of Beijing-based JD.