There’s a Chinese tradition to wear red-colored underwear to welcome the new year, especially during one’s own “zodiac year” for extra luck. (The Chinese lunar calendar includes a cycle of twelve years, with each year represented by an animal.) One young man, Xin Wang, who is studying at a university in Taiwan, unexpectedly received Year of the Ox-themed red underwear purchased by his mom on JD just ahead of Chinese New Year (CNY).
Due to the distance, Wang’s mom was very anxious that her son may not be able to receive the gift. Fortunately, she found that JD could deliver to Taiwan and Hong Kong. After she found the perfect gift, the parcel traveled all the way from mainland China to Wang’s doorstep in Taiwan in seven working days. JD is responsible for the warehousing and delivery in mainland China, and works with a logistics provider for last mile delivery in Taiwan.
This is also a first holiday delivery received by Wang. Although he doesn’t subscribe to old traditions, he felt a sense of warmth from his mom, he said.
Jing Zhang, who works at JD’s customer service department shared, “Because the delivery was done by our partner, the tracking information didn’t update that fast on JD app. Wang’s mom called me to check the logistics details every day until her son finally received the parcel. I can feel how much she cares about her son.”
Jing Zhang
This is just one example of how JD can help customers when they are in need. A teenager, 14-year old Xue who was raised by his mom alone, bought a birthday cake for his mom recently with the help of JD’s customer service team.
Due to the uncertainty of COVID-19, Xue’s mom will stay in the city where she works, Beijing, during Chinese New Year. Xue will stay in their hometown of Mianyang, Sichuan province for schooling. This is the second year in which they will be apart during CNY.
Xue’s mom is a food delivery courier, and Xue worried that she wouldn’t have time to celebrate her birthday. One night in late December, 2020, Xue contacted JD for help. Xue said, “I only have RMB 130 yuan, but I was wondering if I can buy a birthday cake for my mom, as tomorrow is her birthday.”
Linyu Fan, who works at JD’s customer service center picked up the call, and carefully suggested several cakes which could be delivered the next day. Xue chose a cake with peach flavor, which is his mom’s favorite flavor.
Linyu Fan
Fan’s help brought a happy ending. The next day night, Fan received a short video from Xue showing his mom happily enjoying the cake and blowing out candles.
JD always holds the customer first as a business priority. During CNY, JD will continue to operate, providing integrated services covering sales, customer service and logistics down to the last mile.
JD will support the distribution of e-vouchers (electronic consumption vouchers) totaling RMB 40 million yuan during Chinese New Year by the Beijing Municipal Government, which made the announcement on Feb. 9.
From Feb. 12 to 16, local residents can get the coupons via six platforms including JD.com and Xiaomi. The initiative aims to add colors to the CNY festival and also support quality lifestyle guarantee for customers.
On the JD app, customers have the opportunity to get red envelopes every day starting from 10 AM during Feb. 12 to 16, with face value of RMB 16, 66, or 166 yuan randomly. The voucher should be used the same day as you get it.
During the ongoing CNY Grand Promotion, JD has provided all kinds of initiatives for customers, including flash sales, high quality products sourced from the place of origin, as well as non-stop delivery service during the holidays for the ninth year in a row.
JD’s data shows that during the promotion heavy products such as oil and rice sales have increased 100%-200% YOY, and beef and ready-to-cook products sales have surged based on JD’s cold chain logistics support.
JD has helped the Beijing government on the e-vouchers program since June last year, enabling and supporting merchants to resume production after the pandemic started to fade, as well as ensuring customers’ livelihood. JD helped the Beijing municipality government issue e-vouchers during the “Beijing Consumption Season” in June, 2020.
On Feb. 9, JD Logistics, JD.com’s logistics arm, began the voluntary transportation of China’s COVID-19 vaccine in Yizhuang, the Economic-Technological Development Area in the south of Beijing. JD will handle the last-mile delivery of the vaccine from a government-designated transfer warehouse to the vaccination points in the area.
JD’s cold chain logistics system ensures the whole procedure of distribution is traceable and controllable. All vaccines are transported between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius. The company’s cold chain monitoring platform will monitor and record real-time location and refrigerator temperature and report abnormal situations immediately.
JD has several ongoing projects concerning the COVID-19 vaccine transportation, and is expected to transport the vaccine in more regions after the Chinese New Year holiday. In January, JD added a dedicated pharmaceuticals warehouse in Shenyang, Liaoning province to its over 800 warehouse network nationwide. The company is also building cold chain sorting centers for pharmaceutical products in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Xi’an and Shenyang.
“JD is among the first of third party companies to develop pharmaceutical logistics, and has been committed to building its integrated pharmaceutical cold chain services,” said a JD Logistics representative. “In the future, JD Logistics will further leverage its advantages in logistics infrastructure, network and capacity, apply advanced technologies and continue investment in this area to drive innovation in the industry. We hope to work with up and downstream partners to build an efficient pharmaceutical cold chain system and help the industry reduce costs.”
JD Books unveiled the top 10 bestsellers of books among university students ordered through JD’s library procurement platform on Feb 8. The top three bestsellers are the Chinese versions of:
Vision, by Jun Wu
Young People, Read Karl Marx, by Tatsuru Uchida and Yasuhiro Ishikawa (内田树, 石川康宏)
Seeing the World, by Fu Ying
The digital platform provides an innovative way for university libraries to manage book procurement and better serve the diversified reading needs of students at the same time.
Students from universities that are already equipped with the platform can easily select books on JD Books, the book-selling platform on JD.com, after getting permission from their universities, which pay for the book orders. Then, students can request the books to be delivered directly to their addresses – even when they are studying at home on vacation – and after each books were returned to the libraries, the books will be cataloged for future checkout.
“JD Books’ procurement platform aims to offer up-to-date and comprehensive reading choices to students by being a cloud-based resource for university libraries,” said a spokesperson of JD Books.
Since its launch at the end of 2019, the platform has now been adopted by over 20 Chinese universities, with a dozen more university libraries to be connected in the near future. According to JD Books’ plan, about 100 universities in China will benefit from this platform in 2021.
Chongqing University is the first user of the platform. Its library procured nearly 10,000 books via the platform in 2020. Xinya Yang, the head librarian of the university, noted that the platform has created a pioneering book procurement model for the university which enables “freedom of reading” for the students, including reducing their waiting time in the traditional book procurement process, and makes their library operation more efficient, intelligent and convenient.
Content-wise, literary books are the most popular category and books about self-improvement, growth, and business management are the second most popular.
Among the Top 100 books bought on JD’s library procurement platform, literary books account for 30%, especially novels. The Japanese mystery novel writer Higashino Keigo (东野圭吾) had six books shortlisted in the Top 100.
“Sixty-seven bestsellers on the list were published between 2018-2020, making up two thirds of the top 100 books, which shows that students are eager to grasp the most updated knowledge and latest information,” added the spokesperson.
JD opened an imported liquor bar JD YOUNG in Xiamen on Jan. 31, providing free taste before purchase. Most items available for a taste are new products from brands including Bushmills, The Dublin and Dead Rabbit, as well as Hennessy. At 200 square meters, the bar can provide customers with an omnichannel experience, allowing them to enjoy drinks at the bar, and purchase them in-store or online. By using JD’s Omnichannel Fulfillment system, JD can deliver to consumers in as fast as 28 minutes.
Yan Liu, head of imported liquor at JD shared, “Offline stores have the advantage for tasting. By opening the store, JD aims to work with brands to create a trend for alcohol consumption.”
According to an industry white paper, consumption among 18-24 year-old, and females has increased. Social networking and consumption of alcohol on-site for purposes such as networking, friends reunions and more have become trends in China in 2021.
Located in the GRG Art Center in Xiamen, the bar is in an area frequented by young people, and is a program under the comprehensive cooperation between JD Super and Grandgle, a Xiamen based liquor importing company.
Liu said, “In the future, the bar will combine online and offline resources to provide customers with a better experience, such as livestreaming and pop-up stores, tasting salons and more. JD will also plan to open tasting sessions for customers.”
On the same day of the store opening, JD held the omnichannel super brand day for Hennessy, and held a livestream in the bar. Customers can get coupons and purchase directly via JD’s app.
Liu added, “Unlike the traditional bars, JD YOUNG bar focuses more on a high quality, professional operation and fulfillment experience. Going forward, JD plans to expand the model to more cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.”
First, customers make fruits orders online, and then farmers pick the requested produce from the field according to the precise order quantity. This “picking on demand” fruit shopping model has been realized in Beijing by JD Technology, the tech arm of JD.com.
The digitalized shopping model is highlighted in China national television (CCTV)’s reports on February 5, as part of the national TV network’s special coverage on the city’s rising demand for fruits and vegetables ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday.
Through a mini app embedded in WeChat, farmers can plan their fruit picking work every morning based on customers’ orders from the previous day, which means they do not need to worry about the storage issues of fresh fruits any more, the report pointed out.
Within four hours of picking the produce from the ground, it is sorted and delivered on the same morning to self-pick-up stations in the residential areas, ensuring customers can receive their ultra-fresh orders in a timely and safe manner.
The mini app of “Fenghe Dining Hall”
“With the help of the platform, farmers can achieve zero storage to the largest extent, truly solving the long-standing high loss rate problem for agricultural products,” said Yu Zheng, president of JD’s Intelligent Cities Business. “Enabled by a smart and digitalized supply chain, this picking-on-demand model can simultaneously benefit the farmers and residents, and promote the high-quality and digitalized agricultural development in the suburbs of Beijing.”
Yu Zheng, president of Intelligent Cities Business, JD Technology
The app, known as “Fenghe Dining Hall”, is co-developed by JD Technology and Fenghe Commune, a Beijing-based fruit supplier, and local agricultural cooperatives and governments. Launched in August 2020, it aims to tackle the challenges of information asymmetry and logistics difficulties faced by fruit farmers amid the pandemic.
According to CCTV’s report, the app has now been integrated into over 30 agricultural production bases in Beijing, covering 200 farming households. It has helped participating farmers increase their income by 55% from their traditional sales channels.
On the customer’s side, more than 120,000 residents in 46 residential areas and 33 industrial parks in Beijing can now enjoy this farm-to-table fresh fruit delivery service, at a cost that is lower than most local supermarkets.
Thanks to JD Logistics’ non-stop delivery service during the upcoming Spring Festival in China, more people in Beijing are expected to enjoy this fresh and fast service.
The pandemic has accelerated online shopping and created a surge in cross border-ecommerce imports in China due to travel restrictions that have prevented shoppers from buying luxury and other products abroad.
“With the pandemic keeping customers from shopping overseas, the demand for international brands in China has increased, and cross-border ecommerce platforms have become their preferred choice,” said Frank Yu, general manager of marketing and operations for JD Worldwide, JD.com’s platform for imported products.
According to China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), consumer goods imports to China grew 8.2% in 2020, reaching RMB 1.57 trillion yuan (US $242.1 billion). This growth was echoed on JD Worldwide during the 2020 Singles Day Grand Promotion, with total sales during the festival increasing by 50% YOY.
A driving force: “Be kind to yourself”
Popular categories included self-care, beauty, health and luxury, which experts speculate is due to increasing health-consciousness and self-care resulting from the stressful conditions of the pandemic.
Amid rising health-consciousness, Chinese consumers are increasingly interested in foreign healthcare products
“With consumers increasingly concerned about health and quality of life, products catering to the desire to ‘be kind to yourself’ have become a new growth driver,” said Tianbing Zhang, Deloitte APAC Consumer Product and Retail Sector Leader, in a new report from Deloitte.
For many consumers, this has translated as a focus on international brands associated with higher quality. During the current Chinese New Year Grand Promotion, international branded health products are leading in sales rankings with a YOY growth rate of over 343%; and JD’s 2020 Singles Day Grand Promotion saw sales for imported healthcare products increase by five times in the first 30 minutes of the festival. Foreign infant milk powder brands Maxigenes, Devondale and Nestlé also saw sales spike during the festival.
Additionally, self-care has become a major sales driver. JD Worldwide’s Black Friday sales of self-care products increased YOY by over 180%; makeup products by four times YOY; and luxury bags by 93%. The three most popular brands in the self-care category were foreign brands Kao, Shiseido and Ryo.
Sales have increased for cosmetics and other beauty and self-care products
“I’m confident that we’ll continue to see a strong level of personal investment in health and wellness,” said Jerry Clode, founder of brand strategy agency The Solution, in an ecommerce report by digital marketing agency Alarice. “Importantly, this will continue to be weighted towards international brands in terms of premium ingredients and products, supplements, skin care products and dedicated products for children.”
While in the past many consumers preferred to purchase luxury and high-end products in store, growing trust in ecommerce platforms like JD combined with competitive prices has made it both convenient and safe to shop online. Many foreign brands do not have brick and mortar stores in China.
Other factors have also fueled the increase in imported sales online. “Post-lockdown ‘revenge spending’ has also fueled the consumption of imported goods from popular travel destinations,” Zhang added in the Deloitte report. “Additionally, the boom in celebrity livestreaming has spurred cross-border e-commerce purchases by domestic consumers. Finally, overseas brands are moving to cross-border e-commerce platforms as they expand their distribution channels in light of disruptions to offline retail.”
Expanding channels for growth
As the only major economy to grow in 2020, China has been a particularly attractive market for foreign brands trying to find new channels for growth during the pandemic. Recognizing this development, China has also announced some preferential policies to support foreign brands, including lower import taxes and expanding the approved range of imported goods.
JD Worldwide has also ramped up efforts to support foreign brands in multiple areas. Navigating e-commerce operations in the Chinese market can come with a steep learning curve, so in 2020 JD Worldwide offered online training sessions to hundreds of foreign brands and merchants on store operations targeting pain points.
For example, AMPLEUR flagship store, a store focused on beauty products, saw its daily sales double after participating in JD Worldwide’s trainings. The store was launched on JD over a year ago, but before the course it had been troubled by low marketing ability and poor sales performance. After taking the training specifically designed for cross-border beauty brands, the store leveraged big data analysis to understand that most of the customers found the store through searching for the name of the brand. After increasing exposure of the brands’ name, the store doubled its daily sales during the Singles Day Grand Promotion(Nov 1-11).
Complicated logistics transit and high warehouse management fees can also be barriers to entry for overseas merchants. In the event of an order mix-up or a damaged product, customers previously found the return process to be overly complicated, resulting in poor customer feedback. In response, JD Worldwide has developed logistics solutions to help merchants like Electronic Partner, which moved all of its products to JD Logistics’ warehouse in Hong Kong, resulting in lower costs and significant improvement in both order collecting speed and fulfillment satisfaction ratings.
Additionally, JD Worldwide launched a smart operation tool in October to help stores analyze performance bottlenecks to provide customized suggestions through algorithms.
As the market changes, customers’ tastes and preferences are also changing. While foreign brands may carry an association with being high quality, the type of customers that are willing to spend more to acquire foreign products has expanded.
New demand
The rise in demand for international brands is mainly driven by younger consumers and people living in lower-tier cities, including tier-3 and below cities, according to the Deloitte report.
Foreign niche brands are mostly consumed by a population of young, active women, mostly students and makeup enthusiasts who have independence to make purchase decisions, according to the ecommerce report by Alarice. Younger Chinese consumers are also more inclined to consider product quality.
“Coming out of COVID-19, Gen Z will be an essential barometer to assess how Chinese consumers consider international brands moving forward,” said Clode of The Solution. “More global than their older generations, Gen Z will be key to maintaining the premium status of international brands in categories such as luxury, autos and travel.”
Rising demand in lower-tier markets is becoming a significant growth driver. Whereas demand for luxury and foreign brands was once primarily centered in tier-one cities, people in lower-tier cities are now also increasingly health-focused, which has translated to a higher willingness to pay more for imported products, according to the Alarice report.
“Peace of mind”
Also essential to the success of JD Worldwide is consumer trust in JD’s commitment to fighting counterfeits. According to a survey of Chinese consumers conducted by iResearch consulting firm in 2020, JD is rated the most trustworthy ecommerce brand in China, with 56.56% of respondents tagging JD with the keyword of “trustworthy”, followed closely by “high-end” and “highly efficient.”
To further bolster its guarantee of 100% authenticity, JD Worldwide adheres to 35 “peace of mind purchase” initiatives to guarantee product quality and improve the overall consumer experience. These initiatives are split into quality control and after-sales service. To break it down, there are six pre-sales quality control measures, seven during the sales process and twenty-two after sales. This rigorous standard is a best practice for the industry, and demonstrates JD’s absolute commitment to building the most comprehensive and reliable cross-border ecommerce platform for top brands from around the world.
JD Home Appliance flagship stores have launched a New Year’s celebration event in which locations will stay open through the holiday across nine cities, including Nanjing, Suzhou, Xuzhou, Kunming, Bengbu, Ma‘anshan, Jiaozuo, Deyang and Xiangtan.
“We encourage customers to buy home appliances in stores or online at any time, night or day, and enjoy a healthy, fulfilling and interesting Chinese New Year,” said a representative of JD Home Appliance flagship stores, which are JD’s offline home appliance stores serving lower-tier markets. The stores are based on the idea that there are some products consumers prefer to see, touch and test before purchasing.
Visitors to the stores during Chinese New Year will have the opportunity to participate in cooking classes, lantern-making and flower arrangement classes, Spring Festival couplet writing sessions and more. Some stores will also participate in a lottery for free gifts including spring couplets written by local calligraphers.
A wide range of discounts will also be available, including coupons, old-for-new replacements, pre-sales for upcoming hot products and more. Customers can log in to the JD app to receive a RMB 50 yuan coupon for use at offline stores.
As many Chinese will stay in the cities where they work during the holiday this year, sales for home appliances have remained steady, with sales spikes for entertainment and other products, according to the chain.
“Many customers plan to stay at home for entertainment during this holiday, and we have seen a sales increase of video and audio products in store. Additionally, many customers will move to their new houses before the new year, so sales of home appliances also increased,” said a representative of the JD Home Appliance Flagship Store in Bengbu, Anhui province.
After-sales services such as logistics, delivery, installation and customer service will also run uninterrupted, as part of JD’s larger commitment to providing services through Chinese New Year.
