Orient: Individuals aged 20-35 are an important subject in the changes of consumption patterns. Demand evolves along the lines of AI cost reduction and the irreplaceable value of AI.

Orient has released a research report indicating that the demand of individual consumers aged 20 to 35 is being reconstructed toward cost reduction in functionality, intrinsic value enhancement, and external quality improvement. Functional consumption is increasingly focused on actual value and cost-effectiveness, with personal budgets shifting more towards physical improvement and identity expression. Relationship needs are transitioning from high-burden long-term maintenance to lightweight connections and high-quality experiences. AI is reducing the costs of cognitive and basic emotional services, which will drive the large-scale expansion of smart terminals, efficient retail, and AI companionship; professional body services, original IPs and design brands, as well as participatory experiences will form reverse premiums due to their difficulty in being replicated by AI. The main points from Orient are as follows: Individuals aged 20 to 35 are becoming a significant part of the marginal changes in Chinas consumption. In 2020, the population aged 15 to 29 was approximately 239 million, which will roughly correspond to the 21 to 35 age group by 2026, providing a considerable demographic base for new consumption demand. This group is concentrating on employment entry, income independence, and solidifying consumption preferences, with professional income starting to be liberated, while long-term family responsibilities such as housing, marriage, and parenting are being postponed. This creates more personal allocation space for new income. Meanwhile, a rich material environment, digital upbringing experience, and enhanced education levels improve their autonomous decision-making ability, while employment competition and work pressure compress disposable time, and smaller family sizes reduce the supply of everyday relationships. Under the interplay of multiple factors, their demand gradually forms a structure of cost reduction in functionality, intrinsic value enhancement, and external quality improvement: functional consumption is increasingly focused on actual value and cost-effectiveness, personal budgets are shifting more towards physical improvement and identity expression, and relationship needs are shifting from high-burden long-term maintenance to lightweight connections and high-quality experiences. Individual needs provide important clues for incremental consumption, while technological changes will further affect the costs of satisfying this demand, the modes of supply, and the forms of industry engagement. A historical review shows that industrialization reduced manufacturing costs through mechanized production, leading standardized products to achieve mass popularity, while enhancing the relative value of handcrafted skills, unique designs, and non-standard products. The mobile internet has reduced the costs of information, channels, and transactions through e-commerce, mobile payment, and logistics systems, driving Chinas online retail sales from 3.88 trillion yuan in 2015 to 15.52 trillion yuan in 2024, making real trials, professional services, and offline interactions scarcer. Both rounds of transformation reveal a similar evolutionary pattern: technology first reduces the costs of satisfying demand, leading originally expensive capabilities to become standardized and scaled; as supply increases, existing information gaps and channel premiums are compressed, and consumers willingness to pay further shifts toward values that are difficult for new technologies to replicate. This historical commonality also forms the basic framework for analyzing industry development in the AI era, which begins with the costs that AI is currently reducing and further assesses the scaled industrial opportunities brought by the popularization of capabilities, as well as the direction of reverse premiums created by shifts in scarcity. In the AI era, the consumption needs of the isolated individual will evolve along two main lines: reducing living costs with the help of AI and paying for real values difficult to be replaced by AI. AI is helping individual consumers save time and energy, reduce functional expenditures, and gain low-burden companionship by lowering the costs of information processing, consumption decision-making, and basic relationship maintenance. Relevant experiments show that when digital assistants suggest similarly priced alternatives, the probability of consumers paying more decreases by 63%, reflecting that AI-assisted shopping will further compress the information gap and marketing premiums of functional products. The global revenue from AI companionship applications has expanded over 12 times compared to the same period in 2023, indicating that basic emotional services are accelerating towards productization. Therefore, demand for personal agents will drive the expansion of smart terminals, the push for cost-effective functional consumption will foster efficient retail development, and the demand for low-burden companionship will give rise to AI companions, AI toys, and smart pets. At the same time, actual improvements to physical well-being will still rely on professionals and offline interactions, identity expression will continue to require original content and stable social recognition, and genuine experiences will still be grounded in physical participation and human interaction. Hence, professional body services, original IPs and design brands, as well as participatory experiences will form new reverse premiums because they are difficult to be mass-replicated by AI. Risk warnings: Macroeconomic and consumer demand recovery may be less than expected; the development and commercialization of AI technology may fall short of expectations; intensified industry competition and regulatory policy changes pose risks.