Boss, stop shifting the blame to "sluggish consumption": being able to sell products but failing to turn a profit is the real danger.

Recently, I went through the consumption data for the first half of 2026 again.

If you only look at the surface, it is easy to draw a conclusion: consumption is weakening.

In the first half of the year, the total retail sales of consumer goods increased by 1.3% year on year; in May, it decreased by 0.6% year on year. Large categories such as automobiles, home appliances, furniture, and home building materials are all under pressure.

But the more I break down the data, the more I feel that "consumption downgrade" cannot explain the real changes happening today.

On the one hand, the overall growth rate is slowing down; on the other hand, categories such as grain, oil and food, apparel, cosmetics, beverages, and communication equipment are still growing. While consumers are getting more and more price-sensitive, they are still willing to pay for health, convenience, interests and emotional value.

Therefore, my judgment is not that "consumption has disappeared", but that:

Consumption is still growing, but the growth has become more selective.

If business owners attribute all problems to "weak consumption", the easiest next step they will take is to cut budgets, lower prices, and wait for the market to recover.

However, these three moves may exactly cause enterprises to miss the part of the market that is still growing.

In the past, when an industry was on the rise, many enterprises could share the dividends; when a channel grew, a large number of brands could grow along with it. This is no longer the case now. Growth is becoming increasingly uneven, and is concentrating on more specific groups of people, clearer scenarios, more efficient channels, and more convincing value.

The slowdown in total volume is only a superficial phenomenon, and the redistribution of growth is the truth.

This means a very practical change for business owners:

In the future, when doing consumer business, the most important thing is not to judge "whether the market is good or not", but to judge "which part of the market is still worth investing in".

I. Consumers are not short of money, but recalculating the value of every sum of money

In the first half of 2026, the per capita disposable income of residents increased by 5.2% in nominal terms, but the per capita consumption expenditure only increased by 3.7%.

The fact that income grows faster than consumption expenditure at least shows that consumers have become more cautious about spending. Future income expectations, family burdens and willingness to save are all affecting their consumption decisions.

This is very close to the actual feeling of many enterprises now. Consumers do not stop buying completely, but they will ask more questions before making a purchase: Is it worth it? Is there a cheaper option? Is this function really useful? Will other brands work just as well? Do I have to buy this thing right now?

Therefore, what many enterprises are facing today is not simply "disappearing demand", but consumers have become much better at calculating accounts.

This "calculation" is not only about the price, but also a comprehensive consideration of quality, effect, experience, emotional value and usage frequency.

Consumers will spend as little as possible on products with no obvious differences, but are willing to spend more on products that can bring clear value.

Consumers may compare prices repeatedly on daily necessities, but continue to invest in health, pets, concerts, travel and hobbies. This seems somewhat contradictory, but behind it is the same consumption logic: save where you can, spend where it matters.

Therefore, I don't quite agree that enterprises only focus on low-price competition nowadays.

Low price is of course important, but it does not mean that the cheaper all products are, the better. What enterprises really need to answer is: have I given consumers a sufficiently clear reason to make them feel that the money is worth spending?

Consumers are not unwilling to spend money, but unwilling to pay for vague value.

II. The most dangerous thing is not that products cannot be sold, but that they can be sold but become less and less profitable

The FMCG data for the first quarter of this year is particularly worthy of attention by business owners.

Data from Bain & Worldpanel shows that in the first quarter, the sales volume of urban FMCG in China increased by 1.3%, but the sales value decreased by 1.3%. In April, the market sales value resumed positive growth, but the "volume increase accompanied by value decrease" that appeared in the first quarter still reveals an important change.

Consumers have not stopped purchasing, but the average transaction price and product structure are under pressure.

There may be several situations behind this: consumers switch to cheaper brands, choose products in lower price ranges, or buy smaller specifications; at the same time, platforms continue to suppress prices, channels carry out frequent promotions, and price competition in the same category is becoming increasingly fierce.

This is actually more troublesome than "no one buys".

Because what enterprises fear most is not the complete absence of sales, but that sales are still there while profits are getting thinner and thinner.

Many consumer enterprises today will encounter similar problems: GMV is still there, orders are still there, and the number of users may not decrease significantly, but the customer unit price has gone down, the gross profit margin has gone down, while the costs of traffic investment, order fulfillment and services have not decreased synchronously.

If enterprises only focus on sales revenue, they will easily have an illusion: the business seems to be still growing, but it is getting harder and harder to make money.

In the low-growth period, sales revenue is the surface, while gross profit and repurchase rate are the core foundations.

What business owners need to re-examine is not just sales revenue, but the user structure, price structure and repurchase structure behind the sales revenue.

Who are these goods sold to? At what price are they sold? Driven by normal demand or low-price promotions? Will this group of users continue to buy next time?

If every transaction has to rely on discounts, and every old customer needs to be acquired through new traffic investment, the more products you sell, the more tired the enterprise may become.

Pursuing a single transaction in isolation is becoming more and more dangerous.

III. Growth has not disappeared, it has just moved to new positions

The consumer market in the first half of this year has another very obvious feature: the performance differences between different categories, crowds and channels are getting larger and larger.

First of all, look at product categories: growth is diverging.

In the first half of the year, communication equipment grew by 14.4%, tobacco and alcohol by 13.2%, grain, oil and food by 7.4%, clothing by 6.7%, cosmetics by 6.3%, and beverages by 6.0%; while automobiles decreased by 12.6%, home appliances by 7.4%, furniture by 3.7%, and construction and decoration materials by 8.8%.

This shows that today it is no longer possible to use a single "general consumption trend" to explain the situation of all enterprises.

Making snack products and making home appliance products are not the same market; selling to white-collar workers in first- and second-tier cities and selling to families in county towns are not the same market; operating instant consumption and operating durable consumer goods are also not the same market.

Enterprises can no longer ask in a general way: "How is the consumer market this year?"

This question is too broad now. The real question that should be asked is: is my category, my scenario, and my specific group of consumers still growing right now?

Then look at consumer groups: incremental users are migrating.

In the past few years, when many brands talked about growth, they would naturally focus on first- and second-tier cities, young people, Xiaohongshu users, sophisticated women and the new middle class.

These groups are of course still important, but this year's data also reminds enterprises that incremental crowds may be shifting to new places.

In the first half of the year, the retail sales of consumer goods in rural areas increased by 2.5%, faster than the 1.2% growth in urban areas. Bain's FMCG research also mentions that mature families in lower-tier cities and families with children in fifth-tier cities are contributing new consumption increments.

Behind this is an important business issue:

Who were your users in the past, and who may your users be in the future? The group of users you target may have already changed.

Who will pay for your products? Who are they today? And who will they be three years later?

These two groups of people are likely not completely the same. If the user base changes, products, prices, packaging, content, channels, and even brand expression should all change accordingly.

However, the problem of many enterprises is that the external market has changed, but the "target users" defined internally have not changed for three years.

Finally, look at channels: the value of channels is changing.

In the first half of the year, the retail sales of convenience stores increased by 6.6%, and supermarkets by 3.8%; while specialty stores, department stores and brand exclusive stores decreased by 1.5%, 2.1% and 8.7% respectively. At the same time, new channels such as warehouse membership stores and instant retail are still expanding.

This is not simply "online replacing offline", but the value of the channels themselves is changing.

In the past, the greatest value of a channel was having a large variety of goods and a large number of outlets. Now consumers are increasingly not short of goods. What is really scarce is the service that is closer to me, available right now, pre-screened for me, reasonably priced, and makes the whole purchase process more convenient.

Why can warehouse membership stores achieve growth? Because they help consumers reduce selection costs. Why does instant retail continue to develop? Because it meets the demand of "needing it right now". Why do convenience stores still have value? Because they solve the problem of "being close to me" and meet specific small scenarios.

Channel competition is shifting from shelf competition to value demonstration and scenario satisfaction.

In the past, enterprises thought about "I need to enter more channels", but in the future, they should think more: "What consumer problem do I exactly solve in this channel?"

The so-called "growth pocket" is not a popular track, but a group of people who are still growing, continuously paying for a clear value in a specific scenario.

The growth of the total volume is becoming more and more limited, but structural growth still exists. What business owners need to do is not wait for the market to rise universally again, but find their own exclusive growth pocket.

IV. Brands need to be understood not only by consumers, but also by AI

As growth increasingly relies on value demonstration, the problem enterprises face is not just whether consumers can understand your brand.

A new entry point for consumption decision-making has emerged: AI.

McKinsey's Asia Pacific Consumer Research in the second quarter of 2026 shows that more than half of the surveyed Chinese consumers have used generative AI at the front end of their purchase journey, mainly to learn about products and compare different options.

Although placing orders directly through AI is not the mainstream yet, the way consumers search for, understand and compare products has begun to change.

In the past, when brands did marketing, they mainly studied how search engines, Xiaohongshu and Douyin view their brands. Now they need to add one more question:

How does AI view my brand?

When consumers ask AI: "What are the suitable gifts for parents within 300 yuan?" "How to choose high-protein, low-fat beef snacks?" "What are the healthy snacks suitable for children?"

Who will AI finally recommend?

This is not just a new SEO issue. It requires enterprises to have sufficiently clear product information, verifiable ingredients and functions, relatively consistent user reviews, and the ability to make accurate comparisons between different products.

In the future, brands need to be understood not only by consumers, but also by AI.

This will form a new challenge for products that have long relied on vague advertising slogans, brand aura and channel promotion; for brands with clear product value, transparent information and stable user reputation, it may be a new opportunity.

V. Final note: Growth is no longer evenly distributed to all enterprises

Looking at the data from the first half of this year together, my biggest feeling is not pessimism, but a very practical change:

Growth is changing from "given by the market" to "found by enterprises themselves".

In the past, when the whole market was on the rise, problems such as slightly low channel efficiency, vague target users, and small product differences could all be covered up as long as the industry still had increments.

But today, these problems will be magnified rapidly.

Whether a category has opportunities cannot only depend on the industry scale; whether a product can be sold cannot only depend on traffic; whether a channel is worth entering cannot only depend on how popular it is now.

Business owners ultimately need to answer several most basic questions:

Who are my core users? Is this group of people still growing?

Why are users willing to pay this price for my products?

What specific consumption scenarios do the channels I enter exactly solve?

Can this group of users make continuous repurchases instead of only completing one single transaction?

In the next few years, the real gap between consumer enterprises will not be who is more optimistic or who is more pessimistic, but who finds their own growth pocket earlier.

It may be hidden in a group of neglected users, in a new scenario that is taking shape, in a clear value that consumers are willing to pay for continuously, or in a new channel with higher efficiency.

Growth has not disappeared, it is no longer evenly distributed to all enterprises.

References

National Bureau of Statistics: "Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods Increased by 1.3% in the First Half of 2026"

National Bureau of Statistics: "Data on Total Retail Sales of Consumer Goods in May 2026"

National Bureau of Statistics: "Income and Consumption Expenditure of Residents in the First Half of 2026"

Bain & Company, Worldpanel: "China's FMCG Market Shows a New Pattern: Consumers Pursue 'Quality-price Ratio', and the Battle for New Channels Starts"

McKinsey: "Latest Observation on Asia-Pacific Consumer Confidence: Economic Expectations Diverge, Consumption Choices Become More Cautious"

McKinsey: "China Consumer Market Observation: What New Changes Have Taken Place in the Year of the Horse?"

This article is from the WeChat official account "Yan Tao Sanshou" (ID: yantao-219), written by Yan Tao, and authorized for release by 36Kr.