During the Mid-Autumn holiday, offline gold consumption heated up. Falling gold prices combined with concentrated brand discounts pushed both foot traffic and transaction volumes higher at many gold stores. Store staff said customers coming in to shop during the holiday were mainly driven by wedding-related needs.
From September 25 to 27, this publication conducted on-site visits to gold jewelry stores of multiple brands and learned that during the three-day Mid-Autumn holiday, prices at mainstream gold jewelry brands basically stayed below 1,300 yuan per gram. To boost gold consumption during the festival, mainstream brands including Chow Tai Fook, Chow Sang Sang, CHJ Jewellery and Lukfook Jewellery all launched per-gram discount promotions of varying degrees. Staff at multiple stores told this publication that brand promotions combined with mall activities have created the largest discounts of the year, and these will continue through the National Day holiday.
On September 27, the last day of the Mid-Autumn holiday, customer traffic at many gold stores in Beijing remained strong. This publication visited multiple brand stores and saw that even as closing time approached, customers continued to enter. In front of the counters, customers paused to ask about prices and try on items, creating a lively shopping atmosphere, and foot traffic did not noticeably decline as the holiday drew to a close.
A staff member at a Chow Tai Fook store told this publication that many people came to pick out additional styles or place orders during the discount window, and the store was much busier these few days than during ordinary holidays, with both the number of customers and completed transactions over the three days exceeding normal levels. "The peak periods when customers crowd in are mainly in the afternoon and evening, and most are here to buy wedding gold jewelry and festive gifts," the staff member said.
Customer traffic at the Lao Feng Xiang department store location was similarly strong. Store staff introduced that current Mid-Autumn discounts combined with anniversary activities mean Lao Feng Xiang pure gold jewelry has a per-gram reduction of 100 yuan, the largest discount so far this year.
At the Chow Tai Seng Tiantongyuan Hualian store, this publication met Ms. Chen, a resident who was shopping for wedding gold jewelry. She said her wedding date is set for the end of the year, and taking advantage of lower gold prices and bigger discounts during the holiday, she was buying the three-piece gold set in advance. "Since the wedding date is set, I will have to buy it sooner or later. Buying now saves more than a hundred yuan per gram compared with usual prices, and a full three-piece gold set can save several thousand yuan," she said.
Consumers like Ms. Chen, who are buying gold in preparation for marriage, are not a minority in gold stores. In fact, the second half of the year is traditionally peak wedding season, and around the National Day Golden Week is an especially concentrated period for weddings. For families preparing for marriage, wedding-related gold purchases carry clear certainty: demand is locked in before the holiday, and orders tend to be concentrated during holiday promotions. It is precisely this demand that provides relatively stable support for store sales during the holiday.
However, although the price window has driven up gold jewelry transactions, industry observers believe this boost is more of an early release of essential demand and is unlikely to bring about a substantial change in volume. "The underlying logic of wedding and gift gold consumption is emotional and ceremonial demand, not investment and wealth preservation. This demand has a certain essential nature and can stabilize the foundation of gold retail, weakening major market swings, but it cannot fundamentally offset the industry uncertainty caused by fluctuations in the gold price itself," said Zhou Ting, dean of the Yaok Institute.
In Zhou Ting's view, wedding gold purchases are rigid demand, and the core appeal of this customer group is matching the wedding date. A decline in gold prices will prompt customers who already had purchasing plans to place orders faster, but since wedding dates are fixed, the price window mostly means "buying within a limited time in advance," and it is difficult to substantially change the overall purchasing rhythm and spending amount. Zhou Ting said that large promotions do indeed cause holiday consumer demand to be released in a concentrated way in the short term, but sustained holiday price-cutting promotions can also easily lead some non-essential customers to develop a wait-and-see mentality of "holding cash and waiting for big sales." "Brands need to balance the relationship between major holiday promotions and regular-day prices in order to maintain customers' price trust in the brand and avoid putting greater pressure on ordinary-day sales," she said.
Comments