Meituan-Dianping, China’s largest group-buying site, published a report this week on China’s healthcare market by analyzing the big data it has collected from more than 500,000 healthcare merchants.
According to the report, China’s healthcare market has surpassed RMB one trillion (USD 155 billion) and is growing rapidly, with 57.9% of all healthcare merchants on Meituan-Dianping joining the site in 2015. However, the report says most healthcare merchants are still operating offline, while only 13.3% of them use O2O platforms. Besides, with more than 10 million people following healthcare-related topics on the internet, China’s healthcare industry is expected to see tremendous growth, especially via O2O platforms.
The report lists three of the most popular sports activities: working out at the gym, ball sports, and swimming. But these activities are less popular than other services that require less effort: pedicures dominate 44.2% of the market, and hot springs spa treatments take up 21.0%.
In terms of geography, Jiangsu province has 56,000 healthcare merchants and ranks first, followed by Guangdong and Zhejiang. While people in northern China tend to prefer ball sports, southerners appear to favor swimming. And when it comes to per capita expenditure on healthcare, Shanghai has the highest rate of RMB 611.4, and Beijing comes in second at RMB 407.6.
Women were found to care more about healthcare, as among the 10 million people following healthcare-related topics on Meituan-Dianping, 63.2% were women and 36.8% were men. In terms of age, those aged 18-35 accounts for 80%.
Besides its focus on health, Meituan-Dianping, which raised USD 3.3 billion in January, also announced that it has integrated its education business, which now covers over 1,500 cities.
(Top photo from Chinaz.com)