by Rachel Liu, Ling Cao and Hui Zhang

On JD Worldwide’s sixth anniversary on Apr. 15, customers showed enthusiasm in purchasing various products sourced from around the world, with data showing that beauty and health supplements are the best-selling categories among imported products, including brands like Ryo, Swisse and Move Free.

Since 2014, the Chinese government has issued a series of policies to support the cross-border e-commerce model. During this time, retailers, e-commerce platforms and logistics providers have all started to enter the field, making it one of the important windows for the global economy and trade. In November 2020, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was signed, initiating a large-scale free trade agreement and encouraging more brands to explore China’s massive market. Chinese consumers are also getting more familiar with imported products and showed increasing demand. Data shows that in the recent three years (2017-2019), consumption made during overseas travelling of Chinese people surpassed RMB 1 trillion yuan.

Yunpeng Wang, general manager of JD Worldwide shared, “We saw increasing demand from customers pursuing tailored and high-quality products, and with the support from the macro environment and related policies, the whole imported products industry saw rapid growth.”

 

The Leading Imported Platform

“JD Worldwide not only gained a leading position on market share, brand value and customer recognition in the industry, but also showed social responsibility during the pandemic last year,” said Wang. “Our strong supply chain allowed us to keep providing imported products that customers need during the pandemic, especially during the first few months of 2020, when global supply chain was heavily affected.” JD Worldwide’s strong supply chain and first-party model ensured that it was one of the few platforms that was able to provide service down to the last mile during that time.

Established in April 2015, JD Worldwide has become a trusted platform for Chinese customers to shop for imported products online and offline, which offers over 10 million SKUs (stock keeping units) of imported products from 20,000 brands and 100 countries, covering categories including maternal and baby, fashion, beauty, electronics, food, health supplements and more

Under the increasing demand of Chinese customers for overseas products, JD Worldwide also witnessed a fast growth rate, especially in the past two years since JD put international business as one of the top priorities for the company and provided a wide range of support for the imported business. It is now among the top three e-commerce platforms for imported products in the industry.

JD Worldwide has a strong focus on first-party business, which means it works closely with brand partners and purchases products directly from them to store in JD’s own overseas warehouses, which ensures fast delivery and the authenticity and inventory size of the products. Its growing third-party business ecosystem allows brands to open their own store on the platform, providing another choice to work with JD.  It has 32 bonded warehouse and overseas warehouses, covering 440 thousand square meters. Over 220 countries and regions can be reached by JD’s international logistics routes.

JD Worldwide is a platform to help brands step up and grow in the Chinese market. Many brands and third-party partners grew together with JD Worldwide from the beginning of its launching, such as Swisse.

 

An Integrated One-Stop Platform

JD Worldwide has joined the first group of players in the cross-border business, and made great efforts to optimize customer experience. “One of our biggest milestones in the past six years is that in November 2019, we made an important decision to upgrade our business from a cross-border platform to a comprehensive imported products platform, aiming to create a one-stop platform between international brands with customers,” said Wang.

On the one hand, JD has integrated all the imported products in one place, including cross-border business and general trade business, which now includes duty-free business after the opening of a duty-free store in Hainan. On the other hand, JD has upgraded its infrastructure to match the business development, from warehousing, product quality management, delivery to after-sales. Wang shared, “It’s all about consistently improving experience. We want to achieve an idea that when customers visit JD Worldwide, they are immersing themselves in a super imported mall experience. After the upgrade, we can see customer’s satisfaction rate has steadily increased.”

Under the program, JD will also create innovative marketing ways to attract customers, such as inviting celebrities to open stores, participate in livestreams and other social e-commerce initiatives. By working with Wanda Group, JD Worldwide invited celebrities to recommend products in the Wanda Group flagship store to attract customers. In the first three months of its opening, the store attracted over 1 million followers, about 30% faster than average. In product quality and services, JD will provide special refund policies, and provide more benefits for its PLUS members. JD has also continuously been making the entry process easier for overseas merchants, by opening national pavilions for different countries and regions. JD aims to work with more and more overseas brands and sellers to introduce global specialties to Chinese customers. On April 15, JD Worldwide just formed partnership with Taihe Music Group (TMG) to have TMG stars promote quality imported goods, expanding the program to more entertainment celebrities.

To add more choices for customers and provide more overseas brands a seamless way to enter the Chinese market, JD Worldwide began to source products directly from international shopping malls and e-commerce platforms since last November. It works directly with the partners to launch the latest products from their stores or online platforms simultaneously on JD Worldwide. It will transfer the orders to the partners for them to send products to customers directly from overseas, without third-party transit.

For partners, this not only adds a new sales channel in China with lower logistics and warehouse cost, but also help them test the Chinese market and cultivate best-selling products in a convenient way. JD Worldwide can also offer richer imported product choices for customers through this project, especially non-standardized and high-value products like fashion and electronics.

A series of international malls and offline stores including Rakuten, Kintetsu, AUTOBACS, SOLETRADER, Muller, AKPLAZA, LUXBOY, Tiendas Agatha, Qoo10 and PG Mall have joined the project.

Wang emphasized JD Worldwide’s open attitude. “Offering a comprehensive imported products platform, we hope JD Worldwide forms a prosperous multiple-model ecosystem. Further, we hope that by using omni-channel operation to connect online and offline, such as our duty-free and cross-border stores recently opened in Sanya, Hainan province, brands will find that business is more sustainable.”

 

Entry to Blue Ocean: Duty-Free Business

Last year, JD Worldwide made a big move to enter the duty-free business by opening a store through partnering with Hainan Tourism and Investment Development Co.. The decision echoes recent preferential policies initiated as part of China’s plan to build a high-quality free trade port in the province. According to the plan, Hainan will establish a basic free trade port policy system with a key focus on helping free trade and investment by 2025.

With such a high potential market, and a long growth trajectory, many companies are interested in getting in on the action. JD’s supply chain advantages, technology strength and in-depth market insights give the company a unique position to provide consumers new value. Unlike traditional duty-free stores focusing on fashion, luxury, cosmetics, and even alcohol and cigarettes, JD’s duty-free store in Hainan has gone in an entirely different direction, equipping the store with consumer electronics and small appliances, such as hair dryers, speakers, and coffee machines, aiming to provide consumers with a wider range of affordable products than was available previously and attract a larger variety of consumers to duty free shopping.

“In the past, duty free stores could not engage with their potential consumers through multiple ways. They had no idea why many consumers visited the store, but didn’t buy anything. JD’s market insights will be of great help to them,” said Mark Ma, head of operations for duty free business at JD Worldwide.

“We’re not only consolidating our own strength, but also looking forward to facilitating the digitalization of the duty-free industry,” said Ma. “We are preparing to launch an online duty-free JD mini program this year to enhance an omni-channel shopping experience for customers.”

 

The Vision and Future of JD Worldwide

With trade across countries steadily returning to normal as the pandemic stabilizes and consumers’ demands for international products increasing, JD Worldwide is committed to becoming a platform which can effectively connect both consumers and brands.

JD Worldwide is endeavoring to pave the way for international brands to not only survive but also flourish in the competitive Chinese market. “It’s only our first step to bring in overseas brands to JD. What’s most important for us is to help the brands take root in the Chinese market,” said Wang. “Brands recruitment and empowerment through JD’s various strengths are what we are doing right now, and will continue to do in the future.”

Of course, the customer experience will always be the top priority for JD Worldwide. For Wang, there is a lot to be improved and needs long-time efforts. “We will enlarge our partnership pool with international brands, and improve experience in delivery speed, supply chain efficiency, as well as more convenient and flexible after-sale services.”

 

(liuchang61@jd.com; ling.cao@jd.com; zhanghui36@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

JD Health opened the specialized care center for seniors on Mar. 26. The center will focus on using digitalized and intelligent technologies to tackle the pain points and difficulties that China’s geriatric services are facing, said JD Health’s CEO Lijun Xin.

As of the end of 2020, China has about 260 million people aged above 60, accounting for over 18% of the overall population and the number will continue to grow to over 300 million by 2025, rapidly turning the country into an aging society. How to ensure enough quality healthcare services for this population has become a prominent topic for the government, hospitals, businesses and society.

Telemedicine has been playing an increasingly important role in increasing access to doctors and reducing elderly people’s hassles when visiting the hospital.

JD Health’s seniors-centric care center aims to tackle more underlying symptoms that have caused inadequacy and unbalanced distribution of healthcare support in China.

 

A Full Life Cycle Service

By addressing and preventing the root causes of illness, not just focusing on treatment and cure, JD Health’s platform has been investing its online traffic and big data resources in the areas of health knowledge and management education and early screening of diseases.

On the center’s front web page, users can easily find a variety of knowledge sharing from renowned doctors from specific medical fields. They give useful and tailored advice for elderly people on the prevention and self-examination for COVID-19, anemia, tumors, heart failure, and more.

“Don’t follow hearsay blindly and take unreliable drugs,” wrote Haimei Qi, director of the geriatrics department of Beijing Hospital in her post on the JD Health platform. Dr. Qi is China’s top expert on geriatrics. She summarized 10 important pieces of advice for patients with cardiovascular diseases during COVID-19 and provided a further detailed explanation in three long posts on JD Health. “Learn to manage your blood pressure and measure it from time to time. Don’t suddenly stop taking your antihypertensive drugs. Seek help from your family, friends or community to fetch the drugs for you from hospitals,” she continued.

JD’s trust-based brand identity is an essential reason for many doctors like Dr. Qi to cooperate with the platform. It also gives people confidence to seek credible health-related content. In 2020, active users on JD Health increased by 33.7 million a total of nearly 90 million, achieving 60% growth in the COVID-affected year.

“Thanks for sending me the pill refill reminder every time. This is a very responsible attitude!” a patient with Parkinson’s disease commented on JD Health’s page. In addition to pill refill and reexamination follow-ups, JD Health also extends post-diagnosis support to the services such as pharmaceutical products ordering and delivery, rehabilitation plan development, and providing intelligent health monitoring devices.

A closed-loop service from early warnings for health problems, disease prevention, and medical consultation, all the way down to rehabilitation and nursing service is what JD Health is committed to developing. To realize this, as the vice president of Beijing Hospital, Heng Xi said at the center’s establishment ceremony that JD Health not only needs to play an active role in promoting the “prevention first” concept, but also transcend its role from an e-commerce provider to join forces with all stakeholders including government, medical experts, pharmaceutical manufactures and more to complete an all-embracing service model for seniors.

 

Customer-centric Treatment

“I posted a question at midnight. Dr. Pan, an attending doctor of neurology at the Third People’s Hospital of the Yichun, Jiangxi province, responded almost immediately and gave me some medical advice,” a user commented on Dr. Laisheng Pan’s main page on JD Health, “I’ve got much better now after using the medicines.” Another user wrote that “[after consulting Dr. Pan online] he followed up on my mother’s illness, with his considerate assistance. I believe my mother will get better very soon.”

Dr. Pan is among over 9,000 doctors in China who have been providing online medical consultations on JD Health. Their active online engagement helps to tackle three issues. First, patients can receive a doctor’s timely responses whenever they need help. The fact is that many doctors from smaller hospitals are not as preoccupied as their peers in the top-tier hospitals, so the internet platform helps gather them online to provide medical services diverting pressures for offline resources to some extent. Meanwhile, JD Health’s in-house full-time doctors can always fill in to ensure timely responses.

Secondly, compared to the doctor visit experience in big hospitals in China which are often crowded and time-pressed, doctors and patients can have more patience to communicate in details online. On JD Health, users have at least 30 minutes to interact with a doctor via text, images, phone calls or video, gaining ample time and attention to address their health concerns.

Thirdly and most importantly, JD Health creates digital health records for users which help doctors to get a fuller picture of their patient’s health status, and make a quick judgment to give precise advice and monitor treatment effectiveness.

“Doctors need to understand and continually track the overall situation of a patient in the aspects of health history, genetic condition, living environment and habits to give more personalized guidance,” Dr. Qi said, raising the importance of the internet in supporting precision medicine.

Jianye Wang, director of China’s national geriatrics center and president of Beijing Hospital also pointed out that mental health is an important factor in measuring senior people’s overall health condition. This is where JD Health’s “Family Doctor” program can play a role. The program is a customized health management service product targeted to family users. With it, doctors can not only maintain regular contact with senior patients but also talk to their adult children for a better assessment of the patient’s overall living condition and work together with them to create a long-term personalized health management plan.

 

Preparing Talent in Geriatrics

Every time JD Health decides to establish a new specialized medical center, it will go for the country’s top hospitals or experts as its partner or chief academic leader. The reason is that, beyond providing medical services to patients, the platform also sees itself as an accelerator for public health development through doctor-to-doctor communication.

Beijing Hospital is home to China’s only national-level research institute for geriatrics. Its leading experts in this field Dr. Wang and Dr. Qi are both invited as director and executive director of JD Health’s care center for seniors. At the same time, nearly 60 geriatrics experts in the areas of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, orthopedics, urinary diseases and other chronic diseases form the core team of the specialized care center for seniors.

“We are facing a growing supply gap of geriatric doctors and institutions,” said Dr. Wang. “Geriatrics will develop from being a marginal discipline to becoming a pillar in the future.” According to China’s public health statistical communiqué, as of the end of 2019, there are 3,459  hospitals with geriatrics departments in China, which only account for less than 1% of more than 1 million medical institutions in this country (compared with about 25% in the U.S.), far from enough to catch up with the growing demand.

Dr. Qi recalled that in her early days as a doctor, one patient with minor heart disease symptoms suddenly fell into a fatal situation. Doctors found out later that it was actually the hidden kidney failure that triggered the heart attack.

“There is still a big cognition gap in geriatrics,” Dr. Qi added. “Senior people’s illnesses often have complicated courses and the risk to trigger a domino effect is high. The center will work on cross-disciplinary collaboration, specialist training and standardization to help them prevent and treat these diseases.”

Jianbo Xiao, general manager of the internet hospital of JD Health introduced that JD Health’s care center for seniors will provide resources to support different levels of geriatrics professionals on their career development. Medical school students can find authoritative documentation regarding these disciplines for study; attending doctors can look for medication guidelines and treatment plans on this platform; and experts can arrange medical referrals, conduct case analysis, enhance their influence among their peers and patients via JD Health’s platform.

At the same time, rehabilitation and nursing services are also part of the problem and solution to taking good care of senior people. Xiao said that for the next step, JD Health will also reach out to cooperate with offline nursing houses and communities. With its digitalization capacities and supply chain advantage, the company will continue to integrate online and offline services that can cover all healthcare scenarios for senior people in China, concluded Lijun Xin.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)