In the Emotional Economy 2025, Chinese consumers have adopted a more humanistic spending habit. From economic caution and social stress characterizing the year, consumers in cities looked to small pleasures that brought comfort, emotional closeness, as well as a temporary escape from reality. This is a shift from status or functional use to emotionally intelligent purchasing. This is not about retail therapy or impulse buying in the old-fashioned sense, Hub of China’s in-depth interviews (IDIs) report. This is a wiser, more feeling approach: deliberately spending money on things that make people feel better right now.
Table of Contents
Small Joys, Big Meaning Frugality Meets Emotional Value What This Means for Brands Conclusion: When Emotions Drive Value
Small Joys, Big Meaning
Of all manifestations of this trend, perhaps the most overt is the vogue in 2024 for Jellycat toys, soft, huggable figures that are commonly seen in children’s hands. Adults, however, and not children, were the main buyers in 2024. The main buyers, according to Tmall data and supplemented by Hub of China fieldwork, were adults aged 25-44 who live alone or have high-pressure jobs. In their responses, the interviewees would often refer to Jellycat not just as a toy but as a sort of companion. Something that, in its gentleness and lovable nature, was a respite from the challenges of the day. In Chengdu, a woman summed it up nicely: “It’s silly, but a hug after work relaxes me. It reminds me to be kind to myself.” The emotional impulse behind the purchases was also reflected in the huge success of the locally produced video game Black Myth: Wukong, which found over ten million buyers within three days. In opening up a world that gamers could become immersed in something many then looked for in life itself, it resonated on a note that was half nostalgia, half patriotism. Tourists flocked to actual temples that are featured in the game during the October holiday, turning a virtual product into a catalyst for real pilgrimage.
Frugality Meets Emotional Value
This emotional spending is not happening in a void of economic realities. It’s often complemented by increasingly conservative spending elsewhere. Cheap eats RMB 9.9 coffee cups or soups, for example, have become ubiquitous, and bargain outlets like MMHM doubled their size to meet the demand for low-cost basics. But when they do experience emotional value, they are also willing to pay more. Hub of China’s research insights indicates over 60% of the people interviewed are willing to pay a premium for a product that makes them feel good, either emotionally comforting, socially satisfying, or just fun.
What This Means for Brands
For businesses, this presents a clear opportunity. Rather than competing on price, brands must compete on emotional resonance. This can be nostalgic packaging, retail environments that offer warmth and humanity, or products that offer a means for consumers to escape temporarily from the pressures of day-to-day life. The China feel-good economy lesson is: Consumers’ understanding is still spending, but more deliberately, and more emotionally. In 2025, value isn’t just measured in terms of durability or prestige. It’s measured in terms of how something makes you feel. And in the Emotional Economy 2025, that emotional value is a brand’s most powerful currency.
Conclusion: When Emotions Drive Value
The Emotional Economy 2025 is not a trend; it’s a shift in the meaning of value to Chinese consumers. While consumers are increasingly placing more value on meaning, comfort, and emotional well-being than on merely price or status, brands must change their ways, too. Where small things can yield big emotional returns, the most successful businesses will be those that sell beyond products; they’ll sell moments that have an impact.