The 2026 618 mid-year shopping festival has signaled a definitive shift in China’s retail paradigm, moving away from the era of brute-force price wars toward a landscape defined by artificial intelligence and niche lifestyle curation. Worth Buying Technology, the parent company of the influential consumer platform SMZDM, released its final report for the period, revealing how deeply AI has embedded itself into the decision-making cycle of the modern Chinese consumer. During the month-long event, the group’s AIGC-generated content saw reading time surge by over 135%, while its ‘Haina’ MCP Server pushed over 730 million content outputs to external ecosystems.
This year’s data suggests that AI is no longer merely a novel feature but has become the foundational infrastructure for retail. Consumers are increasingly outsourcing the mental load of comparison-shopping to intelligent agents. Worth Buying’s ‘Zhang Dama’ AI agent saw a 92% increase in dialogue interactions, helping users navigate a saturated market through real-time price monitoring and automated product recommendations. This shift indicates that the value proposition for platforms has migrated from simply providing access to goods to providing high-fidelity, personalized intelligence.
Simultaneously, the growth of ‘interest consumption’ highlights a maturing consumer psychology. While traditional heavyweights like smartphones and home appliances remained the top GMV contributors, the fastest growth occurred in categories that signal lifestyle investments rather than utility. Motorcycle-related sales grew by over 111%, while home services and outdoor gear saw similar spikes. These figures suggest that Chinese shoppers are pivoting toward ‘experiential equity’—investing in hobbies, travel, and time-saving services that allow for greater personal freedom and self-expression.
On the B2B side, the integration of AI into brand marketing is yielding measurable efficiency gains. Worth Buying reported that its AI-driven marketing tools were used for 35% of branding materials, while content production efficiency for partners like Haier improved by 21%. By leveraging hyper-local data and AI-generated copy, brands are now able to maintain visibility across a fragmented media landscape that includes traditional apps, social media, and emerging AI search engines. This evolution suggests that the future of competition in the Chinese market will be won by those who can most effectively marry content relevance with algorithmic precision.