Text / Today’s Weekly Editorial Team
At the end of August, the epidemic slowed down and global borders gradually opened. At Walmart in Richmond, San Francisco Bay, in front of the vitamin counter in the store, many Chinese people were whispering and carefully comparing prices in Chinese; a female consumer The person picked up a bottle of Shancun Women’s Multivitamin, which was priced at US$18.48, which is about NT$2.8 per vitamin.
At the same time, when I returned to a drugstore in Taipei, the same vitamin cost about NT$6.9 per pill, which was 2.5 times that of the Walmart shelf in the United States.
Similarly, 500 mg of calcium tablets from Narure made, another major vitamin brand in the United States, are only sold at NT$3.6 per tablet in the United States, but when they fly across the Pacific to Taiwan’s local e-commerce, it becomes NT$4.6. 1.3 times that of the United States.
The price difference ranging from about 1.5 times to 3 times, almost exists in many health care products sold in China. Taiwanese seem to be gradually getting used to the current situation that “Taiwan is 2 or 3 times more expensive than the United States”, so before the epidemic, they only need to go abroad , Going to the drugstore to buy vitamins is almost a “must travel itinerary” for many people.
However, the epidemic has disrupted Chinese people’s plans to go abroad. “Under the threat of the virus, Chinese people’s demand for health care products to strengthen immune function has increased significantly. Therefore, in the past three years, almost all online and offline channels of Taiwan’s health care products have double digits. The above growth rate.” said Hong Henglong, head of Nielsen AGCO in Taiwan, who has a deep research on domestic retail channels.
How big is the domestic health care product market? The Food Industry Development Research Institute, a consortium, estimates that Taiwan’s health care products market will be 160.8 billion yuan in 2021, which is equivalent to an average of nearly 7,000 yuan per person per year on health care products. The price difference between the two, can Chinese people get the same health care function at a price of more than 2,000 yuan?
First of all, let’s look at the possible reasons behind the price difference. To investigate the root cause, tariffs as high as 30% must be one of the reasons.
According to the tariff regulations of the Customs Administration of the Ministry of Finance, the tariff rate for the item “Tablets and Capsule Food Products” is 30%. Cigarettes, which are harmful to health, have a tariff of only 27%. Looking at the cars that are often considered to be too expensive to import because of high tariffs, the tariff is only 17.5%.
The Ministry of Finance said that in order to reduce the tariff rate, it is necessary to write a “Treasury Tax Loss (Receipt) Assessment Report”. Usually, the competent authority inspecting the commodity will consider two impacts. One is “whether high tariffs can promote (protect) domestic Industrial development”, and the other is “whether the price difference will be returned to consumers after the reduction.”
For example, the Ministry of Finance said that in 2011, the tariff on infant milk powder was originally 5%, and it was lowered to 2.5% after consumers reported too much. 7, 8 yuan, consumers do not feel” reason, there is no price reduction. In other words, even if the tariff is lowered, it may not be able to reduce the price of domestically imported health care products.
However, when the price difference is so large, consumers will naturally turn to the daigou industry. There are so many sellers on the shrimp skin, which is the best proof. Of course, the Ministry of Finance is aware of this “channel” of the treasury breach, and it is trying to prevent it. Therefore, since last year, many imported health care products brands that sell across the sea have been alarmed.
For example, “iHerb”, a well-known health care product e-commerce platform in the United States, finally announced that it would withdraw from the Taiwan market and no longer accept orders sent to Taiwan because many consumers complained that the goods were stuck in the customs for too long and were even asked to pay taxes.
“In the Internet age, consumers’ demand has become more elastic, and it is more and more difficult to maintain the tax revenue of the national treasury through tariffs,” said Wu Daren, a professor at the Department of Economics of Central University. In other words, when tariffs are high and prices are high, consumers will naturally seek other channels such as daigou immediately, and it is difficult to estimate the tax that the treasury will receive less.
In fact, the average price of health care products is about 1,000 yuan or more, and there are even a bottle of high-priced products of 3,5,000 yuan. Once the tariff is lowered, the difference may be hundreds of yuan or even thousands of yuan. Consumers will definitely ” very emotional”. In addition, the Executive Yuan now has a “Joint Price Investigation Team”. If the tariffs on health products are lowered, the answer should be very clear whether the importers will actually reflect it on the price.
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