The Tmall and JD prices are actually still similar to pre COVID. If you don't believe me, you can search old 11/11 threads on here with images of price listings.
There is a strong emphasis among Chinese consumers about safety and authenticity of IF products. As personal shoppers documenting the supermarket sale itself (with a Coles or Woolies receipt to prove it) daigou were able to capitalise on this and command a higher final sale price from their customers than the CBEC price. This is not part of the experience purchasing through JD or Tmall and hence CBEC prices have always been closer to those seen in Chemist Warehouse for instance.
This is of course only applicable to English label. There are some misleading comments above about English label being sold in MBS stores. Only the China label product is sold in MBS and it is at least twice the price of English label. And it sells very well for several reasons.
1) it contains lactoferrin; 2) it is generally regarded as safer due to the rigorous quality assurance process that comes with China label registration; 3) additional quality assurance measures like having a tamper proof lid and batch testing for COVID; and 4) being able to purchase physically in the MBS store where customers can ask questions etc. about the product.
The assertion made above that China label /MBS negates or displaces daigou is inaccurate my view. As you can see, there is some overlap in the benefits of purchasing English label via daigou and China label in MBS, but not a lot. English label and China label are still different products and different value propositions. Not everyone wants or needs to pay for the benefits of China label, and so English label still gives a cheaper and more widely accessible option.
Right now, the issues are not to do with MBS or anything you see in Australian supermarkets. They are to do with the company's mismanagement of inventory in CBEC and daigou channels, which are more closely linked than people (myself included) seemed to realise. Many daigou ARE essentially eccommerce operators, reselling on various platforms especially now during COVID.
When the company ramped up production in response to the initial COVID demand, they did not have a sufficient tracking of inventory levels throughout the corporate daigou chain. It ultimately led to an oversupply, unauthorised discounting by some social eccommerce resellers, which in turn pressured daigou margins more generally (which was made even worse by logistics issues and delays). Since daigou sales help stimulate CBEC demand both were fairly even affected in terms of sale decline.
It's a mess, for sure, but once the inventory are restored to appropriate levels, there is a good chance that it will have a positive ripple effect in terms of daigou and CBEC activity. All IMO.
(20min delay)