China COVID-19 Tracker

China COVID-19 Tracker Research Methodology

For China COVID-19 Tracker, Mintel has commissioned exclusive consumer research through KuRunData, a Chinese licensed market survey agent. Online consumer research is run in twelve cities, completing 100 interviews per city with a total sample size of 1,200.

• Our consumer research is based on a random sample of internet respondents from a panel recruited by KuRunData (see more details below).
• We survey four major tier 1 cities ie Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu, four tier 2 cities ie Harbin, Fuzhou, Hangzhou and Wuhan, and four lower tier cities ie Xingtai, Zhanjiang, Changzhou and Xinyang.
• Our sample data can only be considered as indicative of urban consumers in those regions rather than representative of China as a whole. Mintel applies a quota-sampling approach with quotas on age, gender and monthly household income in these cities.

^{* Mintel would also conduct research for COVID-19 globally on a monthly basis, which covers China as well but asking different questions with the standard sampling approach for China Reports. The sample size varies from 1,000 to 3,000. Please refer to the China Report Methodology page for more details.}

Confidence levels

Statistical confidence levels of +/- 2% or 3% can be applied to the data, depending on sample size and percentage of respondents. For example, if 20% of a total sample of 1,000 adults say that they do something, you can be 95% certain that the figure for the population lies between 17% and 23%. For a sample of 3,000 adults, you can be 95% certain that the figure lies between 18% and 22%.

Consumer research is stored in a database supervised by Mintel's statisticians. Additional analysis can be provided as long as the sample size is statistically meaningful.

Sample sizes by city

When the overall population of a city is large enough (> 20,000), sample size is not determined by the size of population. It is only when the population becomes quite small (eg less than 10,000) that the sample size calculation is affected.

Sampling methodology and sampling structure

According to government figures, there are 645 cities in China. These cities are very different in terms of size, economic development, culture, history and lifestyle. To meet Mintel’s client interests (by region, by tier), twelve cities are selected in this research based on their geographic coverage and level of economic development (GDP and per capita income).

The table below shows cities we cover:

Note: Mintel defines the tier levels of cities in China as follows:

• Tier 1: Major economic hubs
• Tier 2: Provincial capital cities and some developed non-provincial capital cities
• Lower tier: Other cities beside Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities

Our sampling structure is presented below.

• Monthly household income

We defined 3 different levels for monthly household income according to different city tier:

Monthly household income         Tier 1 cities                              Tier 2, 3 or lower cities

Low household income                   RMB6,000 - 9,999                      RMB5,000 - 8,999

Middle household income               RMB10,000 - 17,999                   RMB9,000 - 15,999

High household income                  RMB18,000 or above                   RMB16,000 or above

Our research partner - KuRunData

• Founded in 2006, headquartered in Shanghai, with branches in Beijing and Guangzhou
• Member of the China Market Research Association (CMRA) and member of ESOMAR
• Joined ITWP Group in 2017,  the group includes well-known market research companies such as Toluna and harrisinteractive
• Completed more than 4,000 projects and interviewed more than 2,000,000 samples per year
• Provides panel data for major multinational research companies, including IPSOS, Lightspeed, TNS, Nielsen, Kantar, Intage, Pulse, SSI, ResearchNow
• Online panel size - 5,300,000 (by Dec 2018)
• Owns the interactive panel websites: www.1diaocha.com and www.votebar.com and WeChat survey applet