On September 3, the 5th day of the opening of the Hema Mini in Shanghai’s Pujiang City Life Plaza, RMB 0.99 for Hangzhou cabbages and abalone for RMB 1.99 attracted the senior residents to rush buying. A shopping guide shouted: “steak is on sale, download Hema App and you are eligible to buy one get one free.”

Hou Yi, Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of Fresh Hema Business Group, said that Fresh Hema and Hema Mini cover different areas, those areas that large stores cannot reach can be supplemented by Hema Mini.

Therefore, the mission of Hema Mini is to submerge and quickly cover the suburbs of first-tier cities, third-tier and fourth-tier cities, and even some counties. Hema Mini is expected to account for half of total Hema sales in the future.

Hema Mini is obviously more bound with the masses than Fresh Hema. How is it different?

1. Smaller in space while more refined in the products category. Located outside of Shanghai’s Outer Ring, this store is the “most remote” Hema Mini with more than 1000 square meters with about 4000 SKUs; fresh foods account for nearly 70%. The first two Hema Mini stores, one in Shanghai Zhonghai Huanyuhui and one in Shanghai Changli Road, are reported to have 50% of their order from online.

2. Affordable in price. In Hema Mini, celery is 1.99 yuan per 500g, Shanghai green vegetables are 0.99 yuan per 500g, and the lowest price of pork is 25.8 yuan per 500g. Next to Hema Mini is a CP Lotus Supermarket, whose celery is 2.98 yuan per 500g and the lowest priced pork is 24.88 yuan per 500g.

3. Products are mostly unpackaged. Different from the exquisitely packaged vegetables of Fresh Hema, there are small piles of bulk vegetables from the store’s gate. Shanghai’s senior residents are very attentive when picking the products. Some would yank off the lettuce butts and stuff the leaves into the shopping bag.

4. Less seafood, more fresh river food. Fresh Hema’s iconic seafood has been reduced to a few categories such as dungeness crab and Boston lobster in Hema Mini while there is much more common river food, such as crucian carp and king thorn fish.

Compared with the Fresh Hema stores, there are many deli foods that are produced and sold on-site in Hema Mini, such as steamed buns and rolls, dumplings and wontons, as well as marinated dishes and cold dishes.

5. Suspension conveyor chain is removed, and the dining area is reduced. Hema Mini significantly reduces the cost of hardware and renovation. Ni Xiaojun, head of the Hema Mini project, said there was no need to deploy the suspension conveyor chain as the store area is small and manual product-sorting could meet the demand.

The distribution system of large stores has also been taken out of Hema Mini. The distribution range of Hema Mini is 1.5km which can be reached within half an hour. There are only 24 chairs in the dining area.

According to Hou Yi, Hema Mini’s investment cost is less than one-tenth of Fresh Hema, which is now controlled at around 2 million yuan.

6. Cash checkout is emphasized. In the store, there are six self-service checkouts and three cash checkouts. As there is a high proportion of middle-aged and elderly consumers, there are long queues at the three cash checkouts. However, many of the offers are available only on Hema App.

Hou Yi said that every Hema Mini store’s sale is way beyond expectation. In term of submerging, the company is more bullish about Hema Mini, comparing it with Hema Station and Hema Vegetable Market. He disclosed that, by the end of the year, Hema Mini will have three or four iterations, to study the optimal product structure and cost structure.

Hema Mini is expected to expand rapidly across the country after the Spring Festival.

Music consumption behaviors across China vary by income levels and understanding the differences between different city tiers is critical to marketers according to the Nielsen Music 360 report.

72% of the general population in China listens to music for an average of 16 hours per week. The population with the highest average household incomes are the most engaged music listeners, spending more time and more money on music than the rest of the population according to Nielsen.

Tier 1 Chinese consumers, from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, are 15% more likely to be music listeners than the general population. They spend more time listening to music – 19 hours a week on average – and more of their discretionary income on music. They were also the most likely to listen to English language music, particularly jazz, pop and rock.

57% of tier 1 respondents attend live music events, compared with 51% of the U.S. general population. And, 71% of tier 1 listeners in China listen to an online streaming service in a typical week, in line with 75% of U.S. music listeners.

74% of China’s tier-2 consumers are music listeners and are on par with the national average for listening hours per week.

Tier 3 consumers spend the least amount of time listening to music and allocate the least amount of their total entertainment spending on music; they are nearly as likely to listen on a smartphone as more affluent consumers.

Nielsen suggests that involvement in music-based sponsorships could be a solid way to reach Chinese consumers. Not only are they highly engaged with music, but they are generally favorable when a brand is involved, with the highest net favorability going to promotions that offer free music downloads or sweepstakes.

Also read: 7 Habits of China Online Shoppers

Since first half of 2013, China popular group buying websites like Nuomi.com, Meituan.com and 55tuan.com all expanded business in lower tier cities in China. Their market share now shows an increasing gap from other group buying websites who are still making efforts in tier-1 and tier-2 cities.

According to the latest data from the report of China group buying market statistics in August published on Tuan88.com, 55tuan and Lashou had 72.6% and 55.97% market share respectively in fourth and lower tier cities but  only 5.45% and 13.67% in first tier cities in August. Dianping, which concentrating on prosperous cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, accounted for 69.9% market share while in fourth tier city, it only accounted for 1.16%.

Also read: China Online Food Ordering Market in 2014

According to a report released by Dianping, a Yelp like top review website in China, tier two and three cities’ mobile internet growth speed surpassed tier one cities for the first time.It also showed that mobile consumers had become more localized and personalized, the need for services kept growing.

Dianping’s mobile life report in 2013 is based on mobile consumers in 22 cities, and data ranged from August 2012 to August 2013. By the end of Q2 2013, Dianping monthly traffic hit 2 billion, among which 70% were from mobile devices. Mobile dependent users has reached 75 million.

Dianping’s data showed that mobile traffic in Changsha grew 350% in the past year, more than two times in Shanghai. Changsha’s mobile internet growth rate ranked top in the 22 cities.

Besides, mobile users tended to search more about pharmacy, bank, park, internet cafe, movie theater, gas station, nail polish, etc. Cities showed their own features. Hangzhou, a slow pace city, coffee, tea house and bar were the hot search key words.

According to iiMedia Research, China’s mobile users were 450 million by the end of 2012, and mobile users from tier 3 and tier 4 cities reached 163 million. With the popularity of smartphones and mobile applications, mobile has become the major way of accessing Internet among users in three and four tier cities.

Younger generation tend to own mobile phones, and 40.3% of mobile users in tier 3 and tier 4 cities are between 18 to 24 years old.

Mobile users in tier 3 and tier 4 cities tend to be low educated, 85.8% of which don’t attend universities or colleges.

34.6% mobile users’ salary are below 1500 CNY.

According to iiMedia, smartphones are not so common among tier 3 and tier 4 cities users. This is a huge opportunity for mobile manufacturers, and they should focus on people between the age of 35 and 44, who have the most purchasing power.

41.4% use mobile phone to read online news and 38.2% to search. Besides, we should notice that 23.6% use mobile phone to download games and other applications.

Over 80% have used SNS and 43.1% of which have used Wechat.