Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods in March 2024

In March, the total retail sales of consumer goods reached 3,902.0 billion yuan, up by 3.1 percent year on year, of which the retail sales of consumer goods other than automobiles reached 3,496.8 billion yuan, up by 3.9 percent.

From January to March, the total retail sales of consumer goods reached 12,032.7 billion yuan, up by 4.7 percent year on year, of which the retail sales of consumer goods other than automobiles reached 10,916.3 billion yuan, up by 4.7 percent.

According to the location of business units, the retail sales of consumer goods in urban areas in March were 3,384.3 billion yuan, up by 3.0 percent year on year; the retail sales of consumer goods in rural areas reached 517.7 billion yuan, up by 3.8 percent. From January to March, the retail sales of consumer goods in urban areas were 10,428.0 billion yuan, up by 4.6 percent; the retail sales of consumer goods in rural areas reached 1,604.7 billion yuan, up by 5.2 percent.

According to consumption patterns, in March, the retail sales of goods reached 3,505.6 billion yuan, up by 2.7 percent year on year; the income of catering industry was 396.4 billion yuan, up by 6.9 percent. From January to March, the retail sales of goods reached 10,688.2 billion yuan, up by 4.0 percent; the income of catering industry was 1,344.5 billion yuan, up by 10.8 percent.

According to the retail formats, from January to March, the retail sales of supermarket, convenience store, specialty store and brand exclusive store in retail enterprises above the designated size increased by 2.2, 5.2, 6.3 and 1.1 percent respectively year on year, and the retail sales of department store decreased by 2.4 percent.

From January to March, the online retail sales nationwide reached 3,308.2 billion yuan, up by 12.4 percent year on year, of which the online retail sales of physical goods reached 2,805.3 billion yuan, up by 11.6 percent, accounting for 23.3 percent of the total retail sales of consumer goods; among the online retail sales of physical goods, food, clothing and consumer goods increased by 21.1, 12.1 and 9.7 percent respectively.

Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods in March 2024

Annotations:

1. Explanatory Notes

Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods: refer to the amount of physical goods sold by enterprises (units and individual households) to individuals and social groups for non-production and non-business purposes through transactions, as well as the amount of income obtained from providing catering services.

Online Retail Sales: refer to the sales of goods and services got through public online trading platform (including self-built websites and third-party platform). Goods and services include physical goods and non-physical goods (such as virtual product, services).

The total retail sales of consumer goods include online retail sales of physical goods, excludes online retail sales of non-physical goods.

2. Statistical Coverage

Legal person enterprises, industrial activity units and self-employed households engaged in goods retail activities or providing catering services. Among them, units above the designated size refer to wholesale enterprises (units and individuals) with annual main business income of 20 million yuan and above, retail enterprises (units and individuals) with annual main business income of 5 million yuan and above, and enterprises (units and individuals) engaged in hotels and catering services with annual main business income of 2 million yuan and above.

As the range of wholesale and retail enterprises, hotels and catering enterprises (units and individual households) above the designated size changes every year, in order to ensure that the data of this year are comparable with the previous year, the same period number used to calculate the year-on-year growth rate of various indicators such as retail sales of consumer goods of units above the designated size is consistent with the statistical range of enterprises (units and individual households) in this period, and there is a different data access standard between the data published in this year and the previous year. The main reason is that every year, some enterprises (units and individual households) will be included in the survey after having reached the requisite size, and some (units and individual households) that fail to meet the quota standards due to their smaller scale will exit the survey, and there are also the effects of enterprises (units and individual households) that are newly established, bankrupt and enterprises with their business licenses cancelled (revoked).

3. Survey Methods

All enterprises above the designated size are surveyed, while the data of enterprises below the designated size are collected by sampling survey.

4. Month-on-Month Figure Revision

According to the auto-revision function of the seasonal adjustment model, the month-on-month growth rate of the total retail sales of consumer goods since March 2023 was revised. The revised results and the month-on-month data of March 2024 are as follows: