May 29, 2024|
JD.com’s 2024 618 Grand Promotion: Boosting Consumption Through Tech and Service Innovations
JD.com is set to energize the retail landscape with its 2024 JD618 Grand Promotion. Announced at a press conference on May 28th, this year’s shopping festival will officially kick off on May 31 at 8:00 PM. The event will see immediate sales, bypassing the traditional pre-sale phase and starting four hours early to maximize consumer convenience. With the theme “Affordability and Quality,” JD618 aims to provide a seamless shopping experience that save consumers money, time, and hassle.
Sandy Xu, CEO of JD.com, emphasized at the press conference that delivering the ultimate user experience is JD’s core mission and a key driver of its growth. As consumer demand becomes increasingly personalized, Xu believes that technology and service innovations will stimulate consumer demand, creating a positive development cycle.
Sandy Xu, CEO of JD.com
On the topic of customer service quality, Xu highlighted that JD.com has approximately 600 million active users, supported by over 20,000 customer service representatives and hundreds of thousands of JD delivery personnel. JD’s intelligent customer service system can automate 90% of service inquiries across pre-sale, sale, and post-sale scenarios. This unique business model enables JD.com to maintain real-time communication with users throughout the consumption cycle.
For this year’s JD618, JD.com is enhancing the consumer experience with several key services, including:
- Price protection on over 85% of products, allowing consumers to claim the price difference within the protection period. This service saved consumers nearly 3 billion RMB over the past year.
- Free home pick-up for returns on 97% of JD’s self-operated products and 75% of third-party merchant stores.
- An upgraded instant retail service, “JD NOW,” partnering with over 500,000 physical stores to offer on-demand shopping with delivery as fast as nine minutes.
- More than 200 basic services addressing common consumer pain points, with over 80 industry-first and unique services.
- 24/7 customer service from in-house representatives.
Xu also noted that JD’s extensive experience in the retail industry has allowed the company to accumulate high-quality interactive data, substantial industry know-how, and technical capabilities. This alignment of JD’s technology with industry needs enables the adoption of AI and other intelligent technologies to provide smarter services and more affordable shopping experiences at this year’s 618 event.
One notable innovation is the integration of AI digital avatars. Utilizing JD’s advanced language model, ChatRhino (also known as Yanxi), AI avatars of 18 brand leaders will debut in JD’s livestreams, following the recent introduction of JD’s founder Richard Liu’s avatar. These avatars will offer 50% off and numerous other discounts for viewers.
Additional affordability-focused promotions include:
- Hundreds of brand bosses presenting popular products starting at 1 RMB through JD’s livestream series.
- JD’s professional procurement and sales managers offering low-priced goods in their livestream channels.
- Daily 20 RMB subsidies for consumers on JD’s platform.
- “2 RMB Free Shipping Day,” offering millions of 2 RMB products.
- Numerous cost-effective goods from various industrial belts are available with free shipping.
JD.com’s customer-first commitment focuses on enhancing the shopping experience by providing a “Diverse Selection, Fast Delivery, High-Quality, and Cost-Effective” range of products and services. In the past year, JD launched the “100 Billion Yuan Discount” program to boost cost-effectiveness and product variety, attracting over 100 million users. The company also launched the “Spring Dawn Initiative” in 2023, which increased the number of third-party sellers to over one million and doubled the SKU count since early last year. To ensure high quality and fast delivery, JD.com has lowered the free shipping threshold, introduced unlimited free shipping for PLUS members, and expanded free home pick-up and refund-only services to third-party merchants. JD Logistics’ “211” same-day and next-day delivery service now covers hundreds of cities across China.