Emotional value drives booming consumer market

Emotional consumption took off on Chinese social media at the start of 2026, emerging as a new way for young people to express themselves and find comfort.

"On weekdays, I'll treat myself to a newly launched co-branded milk tea, and on weekends, I take classes to learn traditional intangible cultural heritage crafts. That routine helps me unwind," said Qiao Ziyan, who was born in the 1990s and currently works in Beijing.

A 2025 report on emotion-driven consumption among Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012), jointly released by the Shanghai Youth and Children Research Center and other organizations, identified five top categories that deliver emotional value. These include physical products such as plush toys, aromatherapy items and stress-relief gadgets; experience-based spending like concerts, stand-up shows and psychological counseling; social consumption; digital consumption; and purchases of co-branded products and IP collaborations.

Consumers select blind boxes at a Pop Mart store in Xidan Joy City, a shopping mall in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 28, 2024. (Xinhua/Shi Yifei)

Perler bead crafting is catching on among young people. Whether made for themselves or given as gifts to friends, the handmade pieces are fueling a growing market that combines emotional value with commercial potential.

Data from China's e-commerce platform Meituan show that searches for perler bead crafting on the platform have surged more than tenfold year on year since the start of 2026, while transaction orders have doubled. People aged 20 to 25 account for nearly 40 percent of those searching for the activity. Meanwhile, searches for pet photography have also risen by more than 40 percent year on year.

Online video and audio content has become a key channel for sparking and amplifying emotion-driven consumption. The historical epic TV series "Swords into Plowshares," which premiered at the start of this year, has boosted sales of related books. Creative cultural products inspired by the bronze fish-shaped tally, an official ID token featured in the show, sold several million units within 24 hours. Meanwhile, the filming location, Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province, saw travel bookings rise by 31 percent year on year in the run-up to the Spring Festival.

Short videos and micro-dramas also experienced explosive growth in 2025, with the domestic user base approaching 700 million and the market value surpassing 100 billion yuan ($14.52 billion).

Market research firm iiMedia Research reported that the market scale of China's "emotion economy" reached 2.3 trillion yuan in 2024 and is projected to exceed 4.5 trillion yuan by 2029.

In 2024, the market scale of the "guzi" economy — a catchall term derived from a phonetic pun on the English word "goods" that refers to spin-off merchandise linked to anime, music and gaming — reached 168.9 billion yuan, up 40.63 percent year on year.

"Developing creative cultural products based on IPs is an important way to energize emotion-driven consumption," said Zhou Zhiqiang, a professor at Nankai University.

The guzi economy uses IPs to turn emotional resonance in the virtual world into real-world consumption. Through collectibles, interactive experiences and other activities, it meets Gen Z's needs for emotional support, self-expression and a sense of belonging.

"Emotion-driven consumption goes beyond a market activity; it also acts as a carrier of cultural identity," said Bai Xue, head of the Data Innovation Lab at the Shanghai Youth and Children Research Center.

Looking ahead, she emphasized that harnessing China's rich traditional culture and transforming it into modern, emotionally compelling IPs will be a major engine for innovation in emotion-driven consumption.

Emotion-driven consumption is also transforming commercial spaces, industrial ecosystems, and models of employment and entrepreneurship, injecting fresh momentum into regional economic growth.

By introducing guzi stores, night schools and stress-relief venues, older shopping malls such as Bailian ZX Creative Centre in Shanghai have doubled or even quadrupled revenue per square meter. Data from Douyin's e-commerce arm show that over the past year, more than 9,800 businesses in the emotion-driven consumption sector have grown sales from zero to several million yuan.