China demands diverse content

China’s iResearch Annual Summit explores the internet in 2019

China’s current economic environment is now dominated by Millennial consumers and an accompanying new take on content, concluded China’s top internet experts at the recent iResearch Annual Summit in Shanghai.

“We are seeing a major shift from an audience hungry for content, to users utilizing the internet for spiritual, intellectual upgrades,” said a breakout group of attendees, debating the challenges of 2019.

As well as a generational change, noted one speaker, we are also seeing an increasingly diverse and inclusive society getting online: the traditional Chinese market must now meet diverse needs.

Also up for discussion at the 50,000-strong event was the role of corporate and industrial services-oriented internet companies. Projections presented at the summit suggested that the annual compound growth of the service sector for the Chinese internet economy will rise to 37.7% – double that of the commodity sales segment – by 2020. The scale of the service sector is set to exceed that of the sales category in 2020.

“Enterprises need to pay attention to where the market is, where users are, and how to win users,” remarked researchers. “All of this stems from the ability of enterprises to establish business decisions that win the minds of users, and to mine the needs of users, define and accumulate products, in order to rationally judge market trends in the market of cross-border melee.”

Dialogue is media partner of the iResearch Annual Summit

–– Words by Xingyu Wang and Kirsten Levermore