中国消费复苏（英）

Jacques Penhirin Kenneth ChowCHINA’S CONSUMPTION RECOVERYA different story this timeChina’sconsumptionrecovery© Oliver Wyman2During the past few weeks, we have discussed extensively with our clients in the luxury and premium consumer goods sectors about the situation in China. As all of them are worried about the current situation, we felt it would be useful to collate collective intelligence on the “if, how, and when” of the recovery.Obviously, there is limited visibility on the question of when China will reopen properly so that consumers can resume shopping as usual. The early pictures of Shanghai reopening on the first day of June were exuberance mixed with a great dose of cautiousness. Optimists expect a full recovery to occur as early as July, but pessimists don’t see this happening until next year. The neutral view puts an end to the restrictive policies to occur around October this year. Our remaining focus then is on the “if” and “how” of the recovery. Will there indeed be a full recovery? How will it look versus time? Who will be the winners of the recovery?To answer these questions, we have interviewed over 30 clients which collectively represent more than US$50 billion in retail sales across various premium consumer and luxury goods sectors. We have also weighted their answers in accordance with the size of their business in Mainland China, and have conducted qualitative interviews with additional players.EXPECTATIONS RESETExpectations have definitely been reset. As illustrated in the Exhibit 1, early budgets as planned in 2021 were on average expecting their Mainland China businesses to grow at 18% versus 2021, a strong year of recovery following the meltdown in 2020. Projected numbers clearly showed robust confidence in the ability of the Chinese economy to weather the global storms of inflation and geopolitics. The actual expectations for 2022, after the recent COVID-19 wave, are now 15 percentage points lower. Forty-five percent of our respondents also believe their China businesses’ full-year growth will end in negative territory.While the reset of expectations was expected, their magnitude was not, especially since the first quarter was still positive (when consumer spending rose by 3.3%, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics). Of course, things were drastically different in April, with a significant decline of 11%. Anecdotal numbers from some clients indicate that in-store traffic, excluding lockdown areas, decreased by more than 50%, and the conversion rate was also up to 30% lower. Although the absence of fresh merchandise due to supply chain issues in Shanghai was a key driver, it was still less impactful than the overall consumer sentiment. © Oliver Wyman3China’sconsumptionrecoveryIn fact, when looking at consumer spending on a sector-by-sector basis, the more discretionary the purchase, the more significant the reset expectations. For luxury goods, for example, the reset expectations are for a close to 25 perc