SHARED OPPORTUNITIES
"In just over 20 years, China's retail market has completed the evolution that took European and American markets nearly 80 years," Chen said, noting that local retail enterprises are now fully capable of competing with foreign firms.
China's retail sales of consumer goods amounted to 33.48 trillion yuan (about 4.76 trillion U.S. dollars) in the January-October period, up 8.1 percent year on year. Excluding sales of automobiles, the growth rate reached 9 percent during this period, NBS data showed.
Gartner L2 predicted that China's total retail sales of 2019 will reach 5.6 trillion U.S. dollars, surpassing America to become the largest retail market in the world.
With China's opening up expanding, retail enterprises from all over the world have entered the Chinese market and enriched the choices of the Chinese people, raking in great opportunities at the same time, said Bai Ming, an expert with a research institute affiliated to China's Commerce Ministry.
"The upgrading of Chinese consumption and enterprises from other countries seeking greater development opportunities in China are mutually promoting," Bai said. "Giving up the huge consumer market would mean self-inflicted damage."
Gartner L2 advised foreign retailers to take China as a digital laboratory to identify what can be transferrable to the West, experiment with emerging social commerce offerings and develop a holistic digital strategy for offline activations.
"Visit China to see the retail developments firsthand," the research firm said in the report titled "The Future of Retail through the Lens of China."
