(Yicai) Jan. 24 -- More and more young Chinese consumers are now buying tea online on e-commerce platforms as offline store sales fall short of expectations for the upcoming peak season during the Chinese New Year holiday.

A tea lover born in the 1990s told Yicai that now she buys tea only on e-commerce platforms Taobao and Xiaohongshu.

In 2022, China’s tea market topped CNY300 billion (USD41.9 billion), with a total sales volume of about 2.4 million tons, according to a report by the China Tea Marketing Association. About 57 percent of tea consumers on JD.Com were aged below 35 years old in the period, the Chinese e-commerce giant said.

Young people buying tea online has gradually become the norm because they focus more on brand tone, price transparency, and price-quality ratio, the China Tea Marketing Association said.

Most tea customers at offline stores are now middle-aged and elderly people, said a tea vendor in Shanghai. There were around one million distributors in the Chinese tea market in 2022, according to data from Frost & Sullivan.

Chinese tea firms have achieved annual revenues of around CNY2 billion (USD279 million), while companies in similar sectors, such as tobacco and liquor, have achieved annual revenues of over CNY10 billion (USD1.4 billion).

The relatively small scale of Chinese tea firms is due to the lack of clear and consistent standards, which should become the focus of their branding strategies, said Luo Xianliang, vice president of Ries Positioning Strategy and Consulting China.

China’s tea market size may reach CNY441.2 billion in 2027, Frost & Sullivan said in a report.

Editor: Futura Costaglione