Mar 20, 2020|

Italians, Russians and More Shopped Online with JD

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by Martin Li

During the epidemic period, JD’s overseas customer service team has replied to almost 100,000 queries from 49 countries and regions, including Russia, Italy and the UK. Many of them placed order on JD.com.

Consumers outside China are turning to JD.com’s e-commerce platform to get products in short supply during the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic, which has caused panic buying in many countries.

Consumers outside China are turning to JD.com’s e-commerce platform to get products in short supply during the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic, which has caused panic buying in many countries.

Among the most sought out products are medical and preventive supplies such as alcohol pads, thermometers and face masks.

Mr. Larionov in Moscow bought thermometers on JD.RU, JD’s e-commerce platform in Russia.“Most Russians don’t have thermometers at home and many rushed to buy them in pharmacies during the virus outbreak. Offline stores sold out of all their stock in just two days,” Larionov told the customer service team online. Also, medical-grade alcohol was sold out in the supermarket. People even started buying Vodka as a substitute,” he said.

A frequent customer on JD.RU, Larionov started buying on the platform in 2018 when he found that there was a diversified supply and that the price was over 50 percent cheaper than in Moscow.He said he keeps buying from JD.RU because he can trust the product quality.

Starting from the second half of last year, Larionov concluded each of his online conversation with the customer service team with the same words in Chinese, translated in English as, “awesome, my old trustable friend”.

In the UK, when the number of confirmed virus cases reached 500 within less than one month, Ms. Liu, based in Shanghai, started worrying about her daughter overseas.

Liu bought alcohol pads for her daughter on JD.com as they were out of stock in many UK stores. However, she found out that the pads would be delivered from two separate warehouses. It worried Liu that her daughter would need to step out of her home twice, which could increase her chance of infection.

When Liu shared her concern with JD’s customer service team, the team contacted and coordinated with the contracted courier overseas to combine the two deliveries.

Sun Xiaowei, who moved to Italy in 2010 and runs a Bed and Breakfast business in a small town in Italy witnessed the close of his B&B as a result of the virus.

What made it worse was that he couldn’t event buy an electric cooker in town because all stores had been closed.

“I had only two choices, eat bread at home or drive two hours to Milan to try my luck,” he recalled.

However, after searching on JD, Sun was able to order an electric cooker and received it quickly.

Sun said that many Chinese people living in Italy bought daily necessities from JD.

 

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

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