by Yuchuan Wang and Ling Cao

Today, JD.com announced that JD Plus, the e-commerce platform’s paid premium  membership program, has over 20 million members, an increase of over 5 million compared with the same time last year.

“The membership economy will bring bigger value to internet players as China grows closer to hitting a growth ceiling for internet users,” said Simon Han, vice president of JD.com and head of JD Platform Business.

Since launching in October 2015, JD Plus has introduced shopping privileges and more services beyond retail including offline scenarios to meet users’ various needs.

JD Plus now includes 12 major shopping privileges, including exclusive customer service, monthly free shipping coupons, ability to earn JD beans (京豆) with purchases at an accelerated rate, access to millions of premium goods and an alliance of brands which offer a 5% discount, and more. In 2020, JD Plus’ exclusive customer service has provided nearly 20 million consultations to its members, which amounts to nearly 4 million hours. The alliance of brands covered by the membership has also been expanded to cover 730 brands including international names such as SIEMENS, Panasonic, L’ORÉAL and SWISSE.

JD Plus has formed a lifestyle benefits ecosystem covering videos, music, knowledge, movies, travel, takeaways, catering and hotels with leading enterprises, such as Tencent video, iQIYI, Mango TV, QQ music and more. Since January to now, JD Plus members have watched paid videos for free that is available through the program for a total of more than 2.1 billion hours, 105 hours for each on average. That’s equal to one person watching 52 movies annually for free. Offline lifestyle privileges have been redeemed 21 million times, benefiting 7 million families. Since launching, JD Plus has worked with over 600 brands on membership programs.

Chunhui Meng, general manager of JD Plus said, “JD Plus members are customers with high consumption power, who have high growth rate, ROI and loyalty. This has also attracted more brands to work with us.”

During this Singles Day (November 11^th) Grand Promotion, JD Plus is expected to help members save RMB 16 billion yuan, according to Meng.

 

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com; ling.cao@jd.com)

by Rachel Liu

JD’s online supermarket JD Super and popular child development magazine Parents jointly released the 2020 JD Children & Infant Food Consumption Trends report in Shanghai on October 10^th. The report provides insight into how young parents in China are raising their children, through analysis of JD’s consumption groups of infant supplement food, which is meant to be consumed in conjunction with breastmilk or formula in the later stages of infancy to improve nutrition.

Compared with previous generations, young parents in China have more scientific parenting knowledge and pay more attention to the quality and nutrition of their children’s daily diet. With consumption increasing, the potential for infant supplement food in China is promising.

Although the penetration rate of infant supplement food in China is not as high as infant milk powder, its growth rate has surpassed infant milk powder. Data shows that the market size of infant supplement food in China has exceeded RMB 20 billion yuan in 2015 and exceeded RMB 40 billion yuan in 2019, with an average growth rate of 20%. It’s estimated that in the next five years, the growth rate of the infant supplement food industry in China will remain around 15% to 20%.

The report shows that during Q1 2020, even with the impact of epidemic, the sales of infant supplement food on JD grew rapidly at a rate of 92.9% YOY. During Q2 2020, when the epidemic receded in China, the industry also saw recovery and sales increased by 108% YOY.

According to JD data, the post-1985 generation is the main consumer in the infant supplement market, accounting for 66% in the first half of 2020. The number of customers born after 1990 and 1995 increased rapidly, along with the average education level. In the first half of 2020, customers who received a university level of education accounted for 71%, and customers with master’s degree accounted for 12%.

High-end and organic infant supplement food is also becoming more popular. JD data shows that the proportion of organic supplement food increased from 8.8% from 8.49% in 2019, and sales also increased from 6.6% in 2019 to 11.2% in 2020.

Longwu Jiang, JD Super’s general manager of maternal and baby products, expressed confidence in the development of the sub-category:“ The market is becoming more vibrant with more young customers and the growing consumption upgrade,” he said. “The pandemic has encouraged more customers to go online, and JD has seen an increase in orders and customers, and livestreaming and short videos for the category.”

 

(liuchang61@jd.com)

by Hui Zhang

Italian luxury brand Stefano Ricci, opened a flagship store on JD on Oct. 16^th, making JD the first and only e-commerce platform to partner with Stefano Ricci in China.

The brand’s best-sellers, such as ties, belts and handbags, which are difficult to order globally due to a lack of inventory, are made available on JD through the store. In addition to its classic collection, Stefano Ricci will introduce its new fall/winter collection through the flagship store.

JD offers a consumer base of loyal, high-income shoppers with strong consumption power, which is well suited for the Italian luxury brand’s consumer demographic. JD is also trusted by high-end male Chinese consumers. Leveraging the overall strength of its nationwide logistics network, JD makes it possible for consumers to receive products the same day or next day, helping Stefano Ricci to reach more consumers in China.

“Stefano Ricci, enriches JD’s menswear category. Furthermore, JD’s market insights and big data will help our brand partner to reach out its targeted consumers precisely,” said Kevin Jiang, president of International Business at JD Fashion and Lifestyle.

Stefano Ricci was founded by the Florentine designer Stefano Ricci (born 1949) in 1972. Its first store in China opened in Shanghai in 1994. Growing up in a universe of silk and cashmere, Stefano bestowed his talent in creating luxury ties. The brand’s line is expanding with its home collections and also deeply involved in the art world.

 

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

by Kelly Dawson

Ahead of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17^th, JD.com continues its work linking poverty alleviation with rural revitalization, which in recent years has become an important proposition for the Chinese economy. One recipient of JD’s ongoing efforts in this area is a tiny village nestled in the lush hills of the Eastern Chinese province of Shandong.

Located in Pingyin County, every household in this village grows roses to be harvested for rose tea, essential rose oil and other medicines. Blooming across 1,000 acres, the roses are large with plump petals and rich with fragrance. They are China’s only edible variety.

A few years ago, these rural farmers had never heard of professional terms like “mechanization,” or “quality standards”. Today, thanks to their cooperation with JD, this tiny village’s roses generate annual sales exceeding RMB 100 million yuan.

“In the past, everyone only knew farming, not technology,” a farmer named Liu Qiang said. “Now JD is empowering our rose planting industry in all aspects by integrating full platform and channel resources such as supply chain, logistics, talent, and traffic.”

At 4 o’clock one recent early morning, Liu Qiang and his wife stood waiting for their double red roses to bloom. At the right moment, they would pluck the rose corollas, which have more nutritional value than the buds.

Until a few years ago, many of the farmers did not understand that they could earn more money with rose corollas than they could with the full rose, Liu said. Although Liu has more than 30 years of experience growing roses, there were natural limitations to how much the farmers could achieve on their own, he said.

The village struggled to maximize profits, which are directly correlated with how quickly the freshly picked roses can be processed and transported. For the roses, which lose value as they wilt, every minute counts.

In 2019, Liu Qiang and his fellow farmers in the village began cooperating with the local specialty store for their region on JD, part of the ecommerce platform’s efforts to sell local specialties from various regions on a national scale.

As part of this farmers’ assistance program, JD started by formulating official grading standards for roses, including corolla size, weight, level of openness, and more. They also unified and coordinated village committees and cooperatives to set up acquisition sites to connect the farmers. After the roses had been picked, they would be quickly loaded into JD’s cold chain logistics trucks and directly transported to nearby production and processing workshops.

Next, the roses would undergo a series of high-tech processing procedures, including -41 ℃ cryogenic freeze-drying, double heat pump cryogenic drying, subcritical vacuum extraction, automatic flower processing and more. Finally, the finished rose tea product would be launched on JD’s local specialty store and delivered to customers all over China and beyond, thanks to JD’s logistics network.

In addition to these process upgrades, JD also assisted Liu and the other farmers with marketing efforts online. In a market that is brimming with rose tea brands, JD opened all channels and platforms to promote the tea via multiple livestreams and other marketing resources.

Ultimately this double-pronged approach helped the village generate annual sales of more than RMB100 million yuan. Additionally, a new package of farmers’ assistance measures announced by JD ahead of the 618 promotion period resulted in a 150% increase in sales in the first half of the year—despite the pandemic.

JD also announced a “Helping Agriculture” project in September, with the goal of driving annual income growth of brand cooperative farmers by 100%. Liu and the other farmers of this village will benefit from these efforts.

Wang Guangyuan, the operator of JD’s local specialty division, believes that Liu’s small village in Pingyin will continue to flourish.

“As a result of JD’s industry chain, the lives of farmers can be improved,” he said. “That also means more people will enjoy the fragrance and charm of Pingyin roses.”

 

(kellydawson@jd.com)

by Kelly Dawson

Sales of primary and secondary education textbooks during the first seven months of 2020 increased by nearly 4% year-on-year; with university and adult education aides also seeing an increase of 3.72% year-on-year in the same period, according to a report released by one of JD’s research arms, the Jingkai Research Institute.

The report, which includes analysis for the secondary and elementary school education market, and the university and adult education market, found an upward trend for composition books, economics and management, and traditional cultural content such as ancient poetry.

According to JD’s data, the transaction volume of examination and certification training courses also increased by 9% year-on-year during the period of January to July. More specifically, training in financial topics saw a boost—among the related categories that grew in popularity were test preparation aides for registered tax accountant certification, accounting and other economics and management courses.

The self-improvement and self-education trend continued with adult English training courses, which increased by 280% year-on-year; and training for users’ skills like Photoshop.

The report also broke down the regions that enjoyed the highest sales across China. From January to July of this year, the highest proportion of users and transaction volume for primary and middle school teaching aides came from Central and South China; followed closely by Eastern China, with a difference of about 2%.

For college and adult education textbooks, Eastern China led transaction volume and proportion of users, but the gap was very small with the regions of Central South, North China, and Western China, which each accounted for over 20% of total sales.

According to the data, the five top-selling cities for primary and secondary school textbooks, and adult and education textbooks, were Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu. Of these, Beijing ranked first for both categories with more than 10% transaction volume, which was far higher than Guangzhou, which ranked second.

New first-tier cities like Chongqing, Xi’an, Tianjin and Suzhou also ranked top ten, with the report speculating that rising book sales could be attributed to an increase in economic development, a larger permanent population, higher levels of consumption and higher emphasis and demand for education.

As various categories demonstrate a collective upward trend, the consumption potential for the textbook market has yet to be fully tapped, the report concluded.

 

(kellydawson@jd.com)