by Rachel Liu

JD and LG have debuted seven new jointly-developed C2M refrigerators and washing machines.

JD and LG took only two months to develop the seven new products. The process included visiting LG’s factory, analyzing the data and designing the products, as well as the eventual product launch and pre-order.  All products are designed based on customers’ preferences and the latest trends in the home appliance industry. The washing machines are equipped with AI technology that can optimize the washing process. The refrigerators add LG’s Smart ThinQ system that can manage the smart appliances.

“We have seen that the Chinese home appliance market and sales channels are changing rapidly in China, and omnichannel platforms such as JD are becoming more and more important for us. To better adapt to the changes and bring more high-quality LG products to Chinese consumers, we had deepened our partnership with JD in this April,” said an LG spokesperson.

According to the 2020 H1 China Home Appliance Market Report released by China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID Group), online sales account for 51.84% of China’s home appliance market, and JD accounts for 28.86% of the market both online and offline. COVID-19 has hugely impacted the offline channels for home appliance, and many brands are making more of an effort to develop the online market. JD and LG Electronics signed a partnership in April to sell RMB 5 billion yuan worth of products on the e-commerce platform, and to work deeper on omnichannel, new product development, customer experience, marketing innovations and smart supply chain.

JD and LG started to work on C2M in May 2018. C2M products the two sides have developed include facial machines, air purifiers, vacuums and more. Based on JD’s big data analysis, JD is able to help the brands with the whole process of product design, launch, marketing and customer cultivation. This model can effectively shorten the product research time, and help bring products to the right customers at launch, which can improve the sales performance.

 

(liuchang61@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

Confronted with export challenges, manufacturers of Chinese car accessories are turning to the domestic market and actively embracing e-commerce for new growth opportunities.

Tiantai county of Zhejiang province is one of China’s main production zones for car accessories. In the next two years JD Auto will work closely with Tiantai’s over 200 manufacturers, offering direct sales of various products at factory prices to customers across China both online and offline.

Under the agreement signed between Tiantai county and JD Auto on September 4^th, the two sides will deepen cooperation on the marketing and branding for Tiantai’s car accessories products. As a result, manufacturers will be able to utilize e-commerce methods such as livestreaming, with the goal of penetrating farther into the domestic market and reaching a wider range of Chinese customers.

To help manufacturers better understand consumers’ needs, JD Auto will frequently deliver customer insights and consumption forecasts based on JD’s big data and R&D capacities, with the goal of facilitating more C2M (Customer-to-Manufacturer) products—and ultimately increased sales and brand awareness.

For a long time, the car accessories industry has been hampered by the problems of unregulated production standards, a lack of leading brands, and disorganized sales channels. To tackle these problems, JD will work closely with Tiantai’s industry associations and leading brand merchants over the next year to come up with manufacturers’ standards for the production of car cushions and covers. These standards will help the most competitive products and brands emerge within a crowded market.

More than 100 brands and 1,000+ stores from Tiantai’s car accessories production zone are operating on JD.com at present, with annual sales of over RMB 400 million yuan (US$58 million dollars) in 2019.

It is estimated that by 2025, the penetration rate of e-commerce in China’s automotive aftermarket will reach 17%. JD has been developing in this field since 2012, not only by expanding product categories and developing consumption scenarios both online and offline, but also by providing internet-based support to traditional manufacturers and industry partners.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

by Hui Zhang

Panasonic, a major Japanese multinational electronics company offering a wide range of products and services, saw a daily sales increase of 1,650% for its brand across JD.com on the opening day of its new custom home furniture store on the e-commerce platform on September 4th.

To celebrate the opening, the brand hosted livestreaming on JD.com with product showcases and special discounts as part of JD.com’s Super Brand Day program, a campaign designed for brands to significantly raise brand awareness and increase sales in China.

During Panasonic’s Super Brand Day, Tetsuro Homma, the company’s chief executive officer of China and Northeast Asia, appeared on a livestream promotion via JD Live, JD’s livestreaming platform, to an audience of more than 4 million viewers.

JD’s Home and Lifestyle business has gathered tens of thousands of both domestic and foreign furnishing brands, with products and services spanning every category of home decoration. Panasonic has sold household building materials on JD.com since 2013, and their intelligent toilet seats and table lamps remain among JD.com’s bestsellers.

“We are optimistic about the huge potential of development opportunities in China,” said Hailong Jin, director of the housing system business unit of Panasonic China & Northeast Asia. “Panasonic’s target customers are a close match with JD.com. With the opening of our custom home furniture store, we will provide one-stop home decoration solutions that can better meet the needs of middle- and high-end customers. Additionally, JD’s logistics and financial services will make the online shopping experience more efficient and smooth.”

Chao He, general manager of JD Home and Lifestyle business, said that JD.com is committed to providing consumers with high-quality one-stop home decoration solutions. “Panasonic’s high-quality products, design team and more cutting-edge customized furniture products are a perfect complement to JD’s home decoration selection. We’re excited to bring Chinese consumers even more diverse home furnishing choices for our customers.”

 

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

by Yuchuan Wang

As Chinese consumers’ demand for services that enable greater convenience has grown rapidly in recent years, JD held a “Maintenance Engineer Skills Contest” during the past weekend in Shenyang, Liaoning province. Fourteen cell phone and PC engineers who won the preliminary competition out of 300 from JD’s Service Plus business competed in the final contest.

Yujian Liu, a JD Service Plus engineer from JD’s Northern China branch, won the championship for cell phone maintenance.

As a one-stop service platform at JD, customers can find various services on JD Service Plus, such as installation, repair and cleaning for electronic products, home appliances, and furniture; maintenance for bags, shoes and clocks; eliminating dust mites; air quality tests and air purifying services and much more.

The platform was designed to offer a hassle-free experience for online shopping, and also to solve the pain points of offline shops providing insincere pricing to customers.

“There are actually some shady institutions and individuals in this industry. For ordinary consumers, there is a certain cognitive threshold which gives people with bad intentions an opportunity to make a profit,” said Liu. He thinks that a platform should maintain its conscience, in addition to providing excellent services, in order to win the recognition of the market and customers.

Yujian Liu

Liu majored in electronics and information technology and graduated from China Agricultural University in 2000s. As he was fascinated in electronic gadgets such as cell phones, he joined Nokia in 2006 as an after-sales engineer.

In 2015, Liu was recruited to JD’s after-sales business. At that time, the team was looking to grow, and Liu found JD to be a great platform for him to further develop his career.

At JD, Liu has repaired almost all phones of mainstream brands. Last year, he set a record of maintaining 520 mobile phones in a single month, with an 100% customer satisfaction rate.

Yujiian Liu is just one of tens of thousands of service engineers at JD Service Plus. At the moment, leveraging JD Logistics’ nationwide network, customers can enjoy JD’s services in the convenience of their homes, sending products to JD Service Plus or visiting JD’s offline service stations in person, with rapid response, transparent pricing, trained professionals and guaranteed quality.

“Now that 5G phones are becoming more and more popular, we have to upgrade our maintenance experience which was previously for 4G phones, otherwise we will not be able to keep up with the pace of change.”

 

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

by Ling Cao

JD Fresh announced that it would sell 200,000 tons of domestic aquatic products in one year. The plan was announced at a fishing season launch event in Hainan province on September 4^th. The event aims to help local fishermen sell their products following challenges brought by the pandemic. JD Fresh also launched a “seafood safety alliance” with government regulation body, aquatic products industry institutions and leading enterprises.

Xiaofei Li, head of aquatic products at JD Fresh said, “The industry has been affected by the epidemic, impacting local fishermen. To address their pain points, JD Fresh decided to leverage its integrated resources to help sell 200,000 tons of aquatic products from all over China, simultaneously providing customers with safe and reliable food.”

According to Li, leveraging JD’s capabilities in R&D of innovative products, e-commerce operation training and marketing resources, JD Fresh has already helped many products from popular aquatic origins such as Hainan, Fujian and Guangdong provinces.

One of Hainan’s leading aquatic products enterprises Xiangtai benefitted from JD’s big data analysis to improve its sales. By matching its JD Fresh customer profile with Xiangtai’s products, JD Fresh and Xiangtai jointly launched ready-to-cook food like boiled fish with pickled cabbage and chili and fish filets in hot chili oil. Even during the COVID-19 period, Xiangtai’s line of tilapia has doubled its sales.

The “seafood safety alliance” will undergo a series of actions to ensure product quality. In addition to providing nucleic acid tests for the aquatic products, the alliance has launched 32 aquatic products standards, providing the first comprehensive quality control standard in industry. The entire process from manufacturing, production and circulation is covered under the standard.

He Cui, a representative from the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance said, “The series of methods pioneered by JD will not only create a trustworthy consumption environment, but also can rebuild customers’ faith in purchasing aquatic products, helping deliver an optimistic message in the industry.”

JD is also expanding its logistics network to guarantee efficiency. JD has added air transportation frequency and improved the turnover rate. The company has also added cold chain transportation lines in Guangdong, narrowing the transfer process. JD leverages integrated transportation resources, and cold chain logistics for the whole process, as well as shipping from the place of origin directly, enabling customers in nearly 100 core cities to receive the fresh produce in as fast as 24 hours. Customers in Guangzhou and surrounding cities can even receive orders by the next morning. JD Logistics also designed special packaging and arranged priority delivery methods for the products, upgrading the last mile delivery experience.

Lixian He, general manager of Hainan region for JD Logistics said, “JD Logistics will continuously expand the fulfillment network for local specialties, leveraging its integrated supply chain, logistics and technology abilities to guarantee people’s livelihoods and promote fulfillment efficiency.”

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

The 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) is being held from September 4^th to 9^th in Beijing under the theme of “Global Services, Shared Prosperity”. JD is participating as a strategic partner for this event with a comprehensive exhibition inside the China National Convention Center, the central location of the enormous exhibition zone for this service trade fair.

Over 18,000 international and domestic participants from 148 countries and regions signed up for this year’s event. On September 5^th, the exhibition started to fully open to all participants and the public. JD’s exhibition area attracted a large number of visitors.  There are five highlights:

 

Comprehensive businesses in services

Many people know JD.com as the largest retailer in China, but over the years, through the development and business expansion, JD has grown and redefined itself as a technology and service provider based on its core strength of supply chain. In addition to JD Retail, its businesses have expanded to multiple services areas such as financing, logistics and transportation, healthcare and more, providing technology-driven services to customers, businesses, governments and more.

Six businesses represented JD.com to participate in this year’s CIFTIS exhibition, including JD Digits, JD Logistics, JD Cloud & AI,  JD Health, JD Business and JD’s international businesses. Their collective appearance will bring people a more comprehensive understanding of JD’s business scale and scope in the service sector.

JD’s exhibition area at CIFTIS 2020

Cutting-edge technologies

An array of high-tech JD products and services are displayed at CIFTIS. JD Digits’ Intelligent City Operating System is a typical reflection of the application of several powerful technologies: the project integrates JD’s technology capabilities in e-commerce, logistics, finance, big data, AI and cloud computing to build an intelligent city ecosystem that can analyze the city’s conditions and provide suggestions for its future development.

What worth mentioning is that JD Cloud & AI helped to create a digital CIFTIS, the online platform of the fair. Leveraging JD’s capabilities in cloud computing, AI, big data, IoT and 5G, JD Cloud & AI provided technology innovation to support exhibitions, events and meetings.

It is easy for visitors to quickly realize that technology is the keyword for JD’s exhibition as well as the company’s commitment. In the past few years, JD has been investing heavily in technology. For the first half of 2020 alone, JD had invested RMB 7.54 billion yuan in technology, continuing to be the biggest technology investor among Chinese companies for many quarters.

A sand table of JD’s smart procurement system and intelligent city project

The role of robots in services

Robots developed by JD brightened up the exhibition space. The first things that catch visitors’ attention in the exhibition area are a line of JD Logistics’ robots: in addition to JD’s well-known indoor delivery robots, inspection robots, and AGVs (automated ground vehicles),  JD Logistics also presented the Taurus AMR (autonomous mobile robots) at this show, which is the latest industrial robot with laser-based natural navigation that can meet different needs of production scenarios.

JD Digits displayed its indoor delivery robot that can be applied in multiple scenarios such as hospitals, nursing homes, office buildings, hotels to deliver medical products, food, delivery parcels and more.

JD Health brought its intelligent health screening robot. Through multiple cameras, sensors, ECG, PPG and bioelectric modules, the robot can provide a preliminary analysis of people’s health conditions and risk factors based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theories.

JDD’s indoor delivery robot

Anti-epidemic Innovations

The epidemic outbreak urged many traditional enterprises to reshape their supply chain systems. JD Business showed three intelligent procurement services at CIFTIS: JD Procurement Cloud, Smart Procurement Management System and AI Procurement Brain. Through the sand table demo on site, visitors can easily understand how these services can be transformative for many enterprises’ procurement processes.

Hospitals share the same need for the integration of digital technology. As people still have concerns about cross-infection going to hospitals, JD Health demonstrated different internet-based solutions, such as its telemedicine service “family doctor”, closed-loop  e-pharmacy, and intelligent solutions for normal hospitals.

Earlier this year, to help medical staff on the frontlines fighting COVID-19, JD Digits provided its indoor delivery robot which is displayed in the exhibition area to a Shanghai hospital treating coronavirus patients. The robot helped transport medical supplies to contaminated areas, thereby reducing the risk for medical personnel from being exposed to the highly contagious virus.

Exhibition area of scientific and technological anti-epidemic cases

Keep opening up

It is the first time JD’s international businesses are showcased as a standalone exhibition section at CIFTIS. Four business areas are highlighted which are the global sales e-commerce platform; business in the EU & the Americas; business in Southeast Asia; and its global logistics network development.

To make full use of the service trade fair to keep engaging with partners from home and abroad, JD also created online exhibitions on CIFTIS’ platform.

Exhibition section for JD’s international businesses

As the first major international economic and trade event held by China after the pandemic outbreak, CIFTIS manifested China’s efforts in continuing economic opening-up and promoting global economic cooperation. Under this platform, along with JD’s own go-global endeavors, JD has always strived to support more premier Chinese brands to reach customers around the world.

In terms of opening up on the technological side, the message JD wishes to promote at CIFTIS is that the company is ready to open up its long-time accumulated capacities in technology and services to society. With more inclusive cooperation with all kinds of partners and empowered by technology, JD will bring greater value to the upgrade of the service sector and provide better services and experiences for customers.

 

Find more about JD’s participation at CIFTIS 2020:

• CIFTIS_1: JD Helps Create a Great Digital Show
• CIFTIS_2: JD Brings in its Latest Developed Industrial Robot
• CIFTIS_3: JD Business Showcases Smart Procurement Solution for Enterprises
• CIFTIS_4: JD’s AI-Driven Digitalization Services Support Transformation of Industries
• CIFTIS_5: A Remarkable Debut of JD Health
• CIFTIS_6: JD’s International Businesses Are Highlighted
• CIFTIS_7: Photo Gallery
• CIFTIS_8: Five Highlights Represent JD’s Core Value and Mission

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)