MK socks Guangdong Province. Photo: IC " />

A couple celebrates the Qixi Festival in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. Photo: IC

As the traditional Qixi Festival, or Chinese Valentine's Day approaches, the romantic atmosphere is driving the continuous improvement of the consumption market in China.

This year’s Qixi Festival falls on Saturday and major shopping malls and flower shops are gearing up for the event by launching a variety of promotions to attract couples and people looking to purchase gifts for their loved ones.

The festival has driven a wave of enthusiasm for flower and dining consumption. 

At a flower shop in Shanghai the Global Times saw that it is filled with various sizes of colorful and fragrant flower bouquets, with the shop owner busy trimming and arranging flowers for customers. 

“We have already started Qixi Festival flower pre-orders, and currently, our orders have doubled compared with normal period. We will be operating 24 hours on the festival day to ensure on-time delivery,” the shop owner surnamed Yao, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Many people have made reservations in advance at restaurants to enjoy a lavish meal for the occasion.

A Shanghai scenic restaurant told the Global Times that its special menus for Qixi priced at 1,314 yuan ($183.54 yuan) has already been fully booked, with no available seats from Friday to Sunday. 

Norah Li, a Shanghai resident, told the Global Times on Thursday that she had made a restaurant reservation two weeks in advance to dine out with her fiancé to celebrate the Qixi Festival on Saturday. They are also planning to shop for accessories and jewelry for their wedding.

As Qixi Festival approaches, multiple e-commerce platforms are offering promotions for high-end consumer goods and jewelry.

For example, Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo has launched a Qixi special event with discounts for a number of jewelry brands as high as 50 percent. 

Douyin is offering a 15 percent discount on some selected items. The promotion will feature a variety of products including beauty products, jewelry, flowers, clothing, electronics, and health foods to meet consumers' diverse gifting needs. The promotion will last for eight days and end on Saturday.

The "romance economy" is driving the continuous improvement of the consumption market, analysts said.

According to iiMedia Research, the gift economy industry market size in China is expected to reach 1.37 trillion yuan by 2024, the Global Times learned from the consultant company.

In the first six months of this year, China's retail sales of services increased 7.5 percent from a year ago, 4.3 percentage points higher than that of goods, official data showed.

China will work to further develop consumer services to support high-quality economic development and meet people's demand for personalized, diversified and quality services, according to a guideline made public Saturday.