by Rachel Liu and Ella Kidron

JD’s 2021 Chinese New Year promotion will kick off next Wednesday, Jan. 20, with various kinds of products, interactive activities and continuous logistics service to help consumers enjoy an abundant and convenient Chinese New Year, even as new cases of COVID-19 crop up in some areas around the country. The promotion will cover products traditionally sold during CNY as well as some new products.

JD will provide products from time-honored brands, top domestic brands and cultural heritage-themed products. New products from imported brands and customized gift boxes will also launch on JD. This includes items such as the C2M mobile phone for elders, limited edition of SK-II skincare products, and the 2021 Spring/Summer collection from Prada and Miu Miu.

JD Super, JD’s online supermarket, and JD Fresh will jointly launch over 10,000 CNY gift boxes, covering nuts, candies, chocolate, liquor, beverages, seafood, instant food and more. There will also be health-supplements gift boxes and physical examination sets for elderly customers. Niche products such as Year of the Cow-themed masks and fragrant disinfectant liquid will also be available.

All kinds of marketing activities will provide a fun experience and competitive prices for customers during CNY. JD will provide RMB 10 billion yuan each  for subsidies and  coupons for this promotion. All product categories will provide different shopping benefits. For example, customers from all over China will be able to apply for trade-in service for air conditioners.

JD is keeping to its promise of continuing to deliver during the CNY period for the ninth consecutive year, making sure that consumers can get the products they need to enjoy the holiday season. As the first company to make a promise to keep delivering during the period, this year JD is further expanding the scope of its services to cover 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, nearly 300 cities and 1,500 districts and counties across the country. The number of districts and counties represents an increase of nearly 50% since last year. Furthermore, consumers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan and 17 other cities can place order of JD’s first party goods in the morning and receive them in the afternoon, even at the  the Chinese New Year’s Day. In addition, JD Express will provide parcel delivery service in over 200 cities, meeting consumers’ most urgent needs.

JD Auto stores in seven major cities will remain in operation the entire holiday period, while consumers can enjoy one-hour delivery of fresh flowers at a discount rate in a 3 km radius.

 

 

(liuchang61@jd.com; ella@jd.com)

 

by Ling Cao

JD Fresh announced today to increase its inventory of daily necessities by 300% for residents of Beijing and Hebei. This comes as Hebei province recently saw a spike in COVID-19 cases. Target categories include noodles, ready-to-cook food, vegetables, milk, eggs, and more.

JD’s offline fresh supermarket chain, SEVEN FRESH, also joined the initiative. Furthermore, the delivery services were expanded to more areas, enabling more customers to receive products in a timely fashion.

JD Fresh’s customer service team will provide 24-hour non-stop online service as well as a special refund policy without the need to get back the products.

For cold chain products, JD will undergo strict disinfection process and nucleic acid testing of fresh produce before stocking items in the warehouses. Once products enter the warehouses they will undergo an additional three rounds of disinfection and regular nucleic acid sample testing.

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)

by Hui Zhang

JD Fresh kicked off an annual sales promotion on Jan.13 for the upcoming Spring Festival which falls on Feb. 12, and one of the ready to cook dishes — Buddha Jumps Over the Wall (Fotiaoqiang)— was widely welcomed by Chinese consumers.

Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, which used to be a common cuisine in high-end restaurants, is one of the traditional dishes originating from Fujian province. The dish, which usually needs one to two days to prepare, consists of many ingredients, including abalone, sea cucumber, ginseng and scallops. Luxury version of recipes even require up to 30 main ingredients and 12 condiments. All the ingredients are simmered for long hours over a slow fire to ensure the essence can be extracted.

The name comes from a story in which a monk jumped over a wall to eat some of this dish, which was cooked at a home nearby. Although monks are not allowed to eat meat, he replied that it was so good that even a buddha couldn’t hold himself by jumping over a wall to taste it.

As COVID-19 cases spike in China, 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China have already called on local residents to refrain from traveling for the upcoming Spring Festival. For young consumers who don’t know how to cook a big and fancy meal to celebrate the annual festival, ready-to-cook products have become one of their convenient and favorite choices.

As Chinese customers have increasing disposable income, combined with the fast-paced lifestyle in cities, they have more demand for buying convenient food online. Buddha Jumps Over the Wall witnessed significant sales growth during the 2020 Single’s Day Grand Promotion on JD as sales of the dish increased by over 4 times within only 5 minutes during the shopping event.

“JD’s supply chain, ecommerce team and logistics advantages can help enterprises and restaurants to better understand their target consumers, and will ensure high quality products reach consumers quickly and securely,” said a purchasing manager from JD Fresh.

 

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

China’s leading economic and industry website JRJ.com published an article on January 14, highlighting three key trends of the B2B markets in 2020 and examined JD Business’ growth to reflect the major changes in the business service sector.

Fast-paced implementation of digitalization is the first main trend, accelerated by the need to withstand the risk of COVID-19. Statistics from International Data Corporation (IDC) showed that 67% of the top 1,000 global companies and 50% of the top 1,000 Chinese companies have planning digital transformation since 2018, but their actual implementation was slow due to various barriers in the process.

By disrupting the supply chain of many manufacturing companies, the outbreak of COVID-19 became an abrupt impetus for them to accelerate the execution of their digitalization plans. Quickly adopting a digital procurement management system is one among the plans to maintain continued production and operation efficiency.

JD Business’ smart procurement solution provided timely support for factories as they started to resume consumption after the lockdowns. Take the GreaterBio case as an example: The disinfectant manufacturer from Dalian of Liaoning province faced a shortage of containers when they planned to restart their work. They asked for JD Business’ help and it only took less than two hours for the JD team to complete a SaaS installation for the company, which enabled them to immediately connect with more than 30,000 partnership resources. During the production resumption period, GreaterBio procured about 100,000 pieces of industrial products in total on JD, which supported the production of over 800 tons of disinfectant at the most needed time.

Providing extensive services along the whole process of business cooperation is in rising demand from many business clients. Making a business deal only marks the beginning of a business service, with plenty of room to expand the services scope.

In light of this trend, JD Business introduced integrated technology service solutions for enterprises in October 2020, extending solutions from a single procurement management area to many other areas including pre-sale research and consultancy, top-level system design, integration with financial and assets management systems and more. Such long-chain technology service solutions fit the need of many large-sized companies, which are seeking more intensive and integrated procurement management solutions.

At the same time, JD Business is also leveraging its strong MRO e-commerce platform to offer more diversified service categories, especially in providing goods for factories, such as tools and equipment for protection, electricity distribution, cleaning and more. Through deepening cooperation with partners like Honeywell, 3M, ABB and more, JD Business will continue to improve its level of professional services in manufacturing scenarios.

In addition to the scope of services, business services are also developing towards deeper levels, from product delivery to operational services. As companies are confronted with a more complicated external environment in 2020, they prefer “marathoner-like” providers who can ensure long-term and devoted operational support.

In the collaboration with Sichuan Road & Bridge Co., Ltd. on a road construction project, JD Business, after delivering the technological solutions, went further to build a front distribution center on the construction site, given the mountainous area would be difficult for transportation and warehousing. The center, with 300 square meters and around 200 SKUs, was equipped with dedicated staff and vehicles to ensure smooth procurement and delivery of the frequently needed MROs for the project, shortening the fulfilment process from the previously needed nearly two weeks to only 24 hours.

JD Business continues to explore ways to enrich and deepen its services solutions to improve its clients’ operation efficiency. Examples include an intelligent settlement system that can help enterprises to realize information integration of budget, procurement, invoices and write-offs, as well as one-click auditing of project expenses, which helps improve the efficiency and accuracy of financial work.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)