CBI Index 2025Q4 Released by the National School of Development, Peking University

China Online Consumer Brand Index (CBI) (2025Q4 & Year 2025)

Encouraging innovation and healthy competition is essential for achieving high-quality development. The “China Online Consumer Brand Index” is the first online consumer index dedicated to benchmarking high-quality development. This index was jointly developed by the National School of Development at Peking University, the Digital Finance Research Center at Peking University, and the Business School of Sun Yat-sen University, with support from Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group.

This index comprehensively measures consumption quality and brand equity based on underlying metrics such as sales, prices, search volume, and customer reviews. Leveraging big data, it evaluates brands’ equity and tracks changes in consumption quality through the average score of a “basket” of consumer brands. It complements traditional macroeconomic indicators like total retail sales and the consumer price index (CPI) by adding the quality dimension of consumption. Additionally, it provides valuable insights to guide brand development and business strategies in the China market.

The CBI Index has three components:

(1) China Online Consumer Brand Index (CBI): This captures the average consumption quality levels across different product categories in prefecture-level cities.

(2) China Online Brand Purchase Index (BPI): This highlights the relative purchasing power for top-rated brands across prefecture-level cities.

(3) China Top 500 Online Consumer Brands List (CBI500): This ranks the top 500 online consumer brands entirely based on actual consumer purchasing behaviors, intending to guide brand’s development and promote healthy competition in the e-commerce market.

Brand Rating and Index Methodology

As the world’s largest online retail market, China’s e-commerce market not only creates new opportunities for brand development but also serves as a dynamic basis for macroeconomic analysis.

The CBI leverages big data from online consumption. Brand ratings are derived from multiple online consumption metrics, with higher scores indicating higher quality, stronger consumer preference, and growth potential. The top-performing brand in each product category is standardized to a score of 100, while unbranded products receive a score of 0. The CBI is the average rating of a “basket” of consumer brands, with higher scores indicating higher overall consumption quality. The total score of this same “basket” corresponds to another index, the BPI, where higher scores represent stronger purchasing power. By limiting the “basket” of brands to specific quarterly time frames, sectors, or regions, it becomes possible to generate indexes for particular time frames × product categories × region combinations.

The scoring system evaluates four key dimensions: Brand Awareness (32.5%), Brand Novelty (27.5%), Customer Loyalty (22.5%), and Customer Satisfaction (17.5%), encompassing a total of 12 underlying metrics. The relative weights of these dimensions are determined using a subjective weighting method, where an expert panel independently assigns weights, and the average of their evaluations is used as the final weighting. Within each dimension, the relative weights of individual metrics are calculated using the coefficient of variation method.

Brand Novelty is a metric typically not included in traditional rating systems but has the second-highest weighting in our brand rating system. This reflects a focus on identifying brands demonstrating rapid growth, strong appeal to younger consumers, and a commitment to product innovation. The approach is especially favorable to emerging brands that are creative, which resonates with the dynamic nature of China’s e-commerce market.

Trend Analysis

In the fourth quarter of 2025, China Online Consumer Brand Index (CBI) stood at 66.35, representing a 5.91% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) increase from the third quarter. This change is consistent with the pattern observed over the previous two years, where the CBI is typically higher in the second and fourth quarters, and relatively lower in the first and third quarters. This is largely because the two major shopping festivals, have become key periods for brand consumption, and consumers are motivated to concentrate their spending on branded products during these events.

On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the CBI increased by 0.11% compared with 2024Q4, sustaining the upward trend of brand consumption observed since 2023. Using 2023Q1 as the base period (index = 100), the 2025Q4 index represents an 11.7% increase relative to the base period.

Figure 1. CBI

(Using Q1 2023 as the Base Period, Base Index = 100)

Industry Comparison

The CBI shows significant differences in both absolute values and growth dynamics across industry categories. A higher CBI indicates a greater concentration of sales among leading brands and fewer unbranded products, while a lower CBI suggests an opportunity for brands to enter and compete. When an industry’s CBI shows an upward trend, it signals either the gradual formation of leading brands or sales consolidation among existing leading brands.

Consistent with the previous quarter, 3C digital, home appliances, beauty, and sports & outdoors remained the highest CBI industries, where consumers have higher product quality and functionality expectations and stronger brand awareness. Driven by “11.11 shopping festival”, most sectors saw overall CBI growth in Q4, but the food sector declined QoQ due to a later Chinese New Year delaying festive demand. In contrast, clothing categories (fashion men’s wear, fashion women’s wear, sports & outdoors) achieved significant QoQ and YoY growth, driven by boosting thermal apparel demand in 2025 winter. 3C digital industries declined YoY, as the first round of subsidy policies pre-released part of the replacement demand.

Figure 2. Comparison of CBI by Industry Category

Regional Analysis

Regarding regional CBI rankings, the top 10 cities are mainly second-tier and third-tier, including Hefei (Anhui Province), Nanjing (Jiangsu Province), Nanchang (Jiangxi Province), Wuhan (Hubei Province), Zhoukou (Henan Province), and Bozhou (Anhui Province). This quarter’s new top 10 entrants are Yichun and Harbin in Heilongjiang Province, where 2025 online retail sales rose 14.7% YoY—significantly higher than the national average of 8.6%—corresponding to its high CBI ranking.

In the Brand Purchase Index (BPI), first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen remain top-ranked, with other top 10 cities mostly new first-tier. Wuhan and Nanjing stand out for ranking top 10 in both CBI and BPI.

Table 1: Top Ten Cities in the Brand Index Series

2025Q4 Top Brands Analysis

The top 5 brands on the list are Apple (苹果), Haier (海尔), Midea (美的), Xiaomi (小米), and HUAWEI (华为), which is largely consistent with the previous quarter. Brands with significant ranking improvements in this quarter mainly fall into three categories. The first category is thermal apparel brands represented by down jackets, fur products and snow boots. Driven by winter thermal demand, down jacket brands such as BOSIDENG (波司登), snow boot brand UGG, and fur brand MSBEAST (野兽小姐) all saw a notable rise in their rankings this quarter. The second category is sports & outdoors brands including CAMEL (骆驼), Pelliot (伯希和) and THE NORTH FACE (北面), whose ranking growth is related to the warming demand for winter outdoor activities. The third category covers brands that have benefited from product innovation and operational strategy optimization, such as 3D printing brand Bambu Lab (拓竹) and healthy kitchenware brand Buydeem (北鼎).

Year 2025 Top Brands Analysis

In addition to releasing the 2025Q4 CBI 500 in this report, we have also scored the full-year brand performance and compiled the Year 2025 CBI 500 Brands. When compiling the full-year ranking, to more accurately measure the comprehensive performance of brands over the whole year, we have applied annualized adjustments to selected indicators within the underlying scoring system. The top 5 brands in the 2025 full-year ranking remain 3C digital and home appliance brands including Apple (苹果), Midea (美的), Xiaomi (小米), Haier (海尔), and HUAWEI (华为). Brands such as BOSIDENG (波司登), CAMEL (骆驼), and UGG, which saw a sharp rise in Q4 driven by winter thermal demand, recorded a significant pullback in their full-year rankings. By contrast, non-seasonally driven brands in sectors including technology and new consumption maintained high positions in the full-year ranking.

The full-year ranking reflects the rising trend of several emerging consumption highlights. First, the pet economy continues its sustained growth. A total of 10 pet product brands, most of which are domestic Chinese brands, have entered the top 500 of the full-year ranking. Second, driven by emotional consumption, collectible and IP-related brands have delivered outstanding performance. The market performance of collectible brands represented by POP MART (泡泡玛特) has outperformed that of some traditional international toy brands. The weight of emotional consumption in the overall consumption structure continues to rise, as consumers attach greater importance to spiritual experience and emotional expression beyond meeting their functional needs. Third, in the 3C digital sector, innovative smart brands have gained strong market recognition. Brands specializing in smart hardware, audio-visual equipment, and wearable devices, represented by DJI (大疆), imoo (小天才), iFLYTEK (科大讯飞), and Insta360 (影石), have all entered the top 500 ranking, reflecting the positive role of digital technology and intelligent innovation in the upgrading of consumption quality.

Table 2: CBI500 (Year 2025 Top 50)

Attached：China Online Consumer Brand Index（2025Q4 and Year 2025）Full Report

Attached：CBI500 (2025Q4)

Attached：CBI500 (Year 2025)