From July 3rd to 4th, the 2026 Yabuli Forum Innovation Annual Conference was held in Shanghai. The theme of this year's conference was "Innovation-Driven, Intelligence Enabling the Future – The 15th Five-Year Plan Blueprint and Corporate Opportunities".

In a speech, Zhang Wenzhong, founder of Wumart Group and DMALL, highlighted that while high-tech industries are experiencing rapid growth, the daily lives, consumption, and employment of ordinary people remain deeply intertwined with and reliant on the physical consumer sector.

He noted the current prevalence of a "lazy economy," where fewer people visit shopping malls. Malls are now striving to attract people back, primarily through on-site processing and experiences that are irreplaceable in a purely online environment—specifically, the personal, human-to-human contact that draws individuals back into the real world. He emphasized that this effort is of great significance.

He also discussed China's low birth rate, stating that attracting more people to physical stores and other places of business for interaction is crucial for promoting population growth. "If everyone just orders takeout at home and there's no human contact anymore, the opportunity to have children might become even rarer," he said.

He pointed out that for the real economy to achieve effective customer attraction and long-term retention, it can no longer rely on traditional advertising, television media, and other outdated models. It must embrace digitalization and AI, building a new system for human-machine and customer communication. This, he stated, is the key to breaking through the current challenges facing the physical retail industry.