Decoding 2025 Online Consumption in China: Green, Emotional, and Experience-Driven Growth

China’s online consumption landscape in 2025 reflects a maturing digital economy — resilient growth, policy support, and an expanding array of lifestyle-driven niches. Consumer demand continues to upgrade, propelled by government incentives for smart and green products, emotional spending, and new consumption scenarios across beauty, appliances, sports, and collectible culture.

Market Overview: Steady Growth with Emerging Consumption Drivers

In the first half of 2025, China’s total retail sales of consumer goods increased by 5.0% year-on-year, outpacing 2024 by 1.3 percentage points. The rebound was sustained by “old-for-new” trade-in programmes, digital promotions, and robust e-commerce activity. Key categories such as automobiles and home appliances drove growth by 5.7 percentage points.

Sustainable consumption remains central. Sales of energy-efficient home appliances and new energy vehicles rose sharply, while the “emotional economy” continued to boost demand for affordable luxury and trend toys. Together, these trends signal that China’s consumption recovery has evolved from short-term stimulus to structural transformation, anchored in green innovation, emotional satisfaction, and digital efficiency.

Policy-supported upgrades and lifestyle segmentation make now a pivotal time to align with both rational and emotional consumption narratives.

Personal Care and Home Cleaning: Precision, Emotion, and Premiumisation

The personal care and home cleaning category maintains steady expansion, underpinned by stable demand and category innovation. Traditional segments such as toothpaste and detergent show clear polarisation — mass products plateau while high-performance, functional variants surge.

In oral care, electric toothbrush kits and specialised whitening toothpaste outperform standard formats, while anti-bacterial and concentrated detergents lead within home cleaning. Emerging subcategories such as aromatherapy candles and multi-scene disinfectant wipes illustrate how functionality is merging with emotional satisfaction, as consumers increasingly buy for both practicality and comfort.

The rise of the “olfactory economy”, with long-lasting fragrance detergents and Chinese-scented home aromatics, highlights a shift toward sensory-driven brand experiences. Scent and ritual are becoming key differentiators, connecting hygiene products to wellbeing and cultural identity.

Beauty and Base Makeup: Functional Upgrades and Smart Simplification

China’s base makeup market is entering a new growth phase. The sector expanded from RMB 73.19 billion in 2022 to RMB 93.70 billion in 2024, and is expected to surpass RMB 100 billion in 2025.

Taobao Ecosystem Platform shows that during major shopping festivals such as 3.8 Women’s Day, 6.18, and Double 11, both volume and value peak sharply, illustrating the power of promotional rhythm in driving “pulse-type” sales.

The market is evolving in three main directions:

1. Functional segmentation – foundation, cushion, and finishing spray dominate the top growth tiers.

2. Technology empowerment – “long-lasting wear” and “natural look” are leading keywords in social discussions, as domestic brands invest in formula R&D to improve texture, staying power, and cost-performance.

3. Smart multi-functionality – consumers prefer “all-in-one” base makeup, integrating sun protection, skincare, and tone correction for efficiency.

This evolution indicates a broader preference for intelligent, high-performance products that align with fast-paced, minimalist beauty routines, where functionality and aesthetics converge seamlessly.

Small Home Applicances: Smart, Compact, and Policy-Driven

China’s small home appliance market reached RMB 504.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach RMB 539.2 billion by 2027. The market is moving from expansion to refinement, with innovation focusing on intelligence, design, and sustainability.

Between January and July 2025, kitchen appliances such as water purifiers, coffee machines, and health kettles experienced notable growth as consumers prioritised health and convenience. Smart cleaning devices, including robot vacuums and air purifiers, also remain strong performers.

The national subsidy policy has driven consumers’ demand for home appliances to upgrade from simple “replacement” to pursuing higher quality and greater intelligence, a shift from “renewal” to “refinement.” Meanwhile, the rise of single-person households fuels miniaturisation: compact, portable, and multifunctional designs are reshaping consumer expectations.

Installation-free and nanofiltration technologies in the water purifier segment exemplify how innovation is catering to both ease of use and health-conscious precision, signalling a convergence of policy incentives and lifestyle demand.

Sports and Outdoor: Everyday Health and Socialisation Lead the Way

The sports and outdoor category in 2025 captures a broader vision of health, social connection, and emotional release. Growth remains cyclical yet robust, with consumption peaks aligning with seasonal shifts and major events.

Participation is widening across demographics. Yoga, swimming, and badminton remain dominant, driven by accessible, social, and self-expressive fitness trends. Compact treadmills, portable training tools, and multifunctional yoga equipment illustrate how home and urban consumers are blurring the boundaries between exercise and leisure.

The emergence of urban sports culture, including tennis, basketball, and running clubs, reflects the evolution of a “sports social” mindset. On Xiaohongshu, searches for badminton has surged by over 265% and topics like “badminton buddy” and “badminton socialising” have also become popular, showing how digital communities are fuelling real-world participation.

Outdoor leisure is expanding from niche to mainstream. Camping, hiking, cycling, and picnicking are now integral to lifestyle consumption, particularly among younger families and white-collar professionals seeking stress relief. Data shows that 59.5% of consumers prefer “light outdoor” activities, low-threshold, easy-to-organise, and style-driven, boosting sales in sun protection clothing, cycling gear, and portable cookware.

In parallel, pet-friendly outdoor culture is creating new cross-category demand. Searches for “camping with pets” and “hiking with dogs” are trending on social media, inspiring product lines such as pet cooling vests and light, breathable harnesses.

The convergence of sports, leisure, and pet companionship demonstrates how consumption is evolving toward shared experience and emotional value, redefining outdoor products as extensions of lifestyle identity rather than functional equipment.

Collectibles and Trend Toys: Emotional Expression Meets Cultural IP

China’s trend toy market (潮玩) is on track to exceed RMB 110 billion by 2026, with 2025 maintaining strong growth momentum fuelled by festivals and co-branded IP collaborations.

The sector is diversifying rapidly, driven by:

• Guochao (国潮) and game-IP crossovers, integrating local aesthetics with pop culture;

• Art toys and custom dolls, appealing to community and emotional expression;

• Blind box livestreaming, enhancing entertainment and interactivity during purchase.

Domestic creators are increasingly embedding cultural storytelling and interactive retail into product strategy, transforming trend toys into vehicles of identity and social belonging. Emotional resonance and cultural authenticity — not novelty alone — are becoming the key to sustained engagement in this fast-evolving category.

Conclusion: Emotion, Efficiency, and Ecosystem Integration

China’s digital consumption is shifting from scale expansion to quality optimisation, where technology, culture, and empathy shape market direction.

Growth now rests on three intertwined forces:

• Emotional consumption, which blends self-care, aesthetics, and community connection;

• Efficiency-driven consumption, driven by smart devices, compact design, and functional innovation;

• Experience-based consumption, linking lifestyle, culture, and identity into integrated retail ecosystems.

From emotional homecare to smart appliances and social sports, consumption in 2025 is no longer about product ownership but about experience, meaning, and lifestyle integration. As consumption becomes increasingly personalised, fluid, and emotionally charged, the key to 2026 will be integration, connecting culture with commerce, efficiency with empathy, and brands with the everyday rhythms of consumers’ lives. Reach out to our team to learn how these trends are reshaping digital consumption, retail innovation, and brand storytelling in China’s fast-evolving online economy, and how your brand can stay ahead in 2026’s experience-driven marketplace.