by Rachel Liu

Many time-honored brands of China are said to be preparing for their A-share listing in Shanghai. Behind the energetic growth of these brands, e-commerce platforms such as JD have made great contribution in helping them improve brand recognition and expand their market shares.

JD has become the largest sales channel for 80% of the time-honored brands launched on its platform. Most of the time-honored brands on JD have seen compound annual growth from 50% to 300%.  JD also provides the brands with a sales channel that covers 362 cities in China. Ninety percent of the brands successfully expanded to markets outside of their local provinces.

Wu Fang Zhai (五芳斋) is a popular Chinese snack brand from Zhejiang province, famous for its Zongzi (rice dumpling, a snack eaten during Dragon Boat Festival). After joining JD, it has expanded its market to all over China. During the Dragon Boat Festival this year in June, JD was Wu Fang Zhai’s largest sales channel and the fastest increasing channel for the brand for the year. JD also worked with Wu Fang Zhai to develop C2M products that can meet the flavor preferences of both northern and southern patrons.

Guangzhou Restaurant（广州酒家）, a traditional Cantonese food brand from southeast China, saw sales from northeast provinces increase rapidly since launching on JD in 2014, despite the fact that flavor preference in the northeast are very different.

Beijing Daoxiangcun（稻香村）, a snack brand that used to sell only in Beijing and nearby areas, saw 60% of YOY sales increase in 2019 on JD, and is welcomed by customers all over China.

The seasoning brand Haitian（海天）, famous for its soy sauce, has achieved compound annual growth of 60.5% since joining JD five years ago. Since the beginning of 2020, its YOY sales increase on JD has been more than doubled, 90% higher than the industry average.

 

(liuchang61@jd.com)

by Ling Cao

JD Data showed that during the JD super flowers day held on Chinese Valentine’s Day “Qixi” on August 25^th, sales were 22 times that of the daily average during the previous 30 days.  Total sales surpassed whole day on 618 Grand Promotion by10 am. ROSEONLY sales broke its previous year’s record for the day in just half an hour.

JD has launched a fast intra-city delivery service which can deliver to consumers in as fast as 20 minutes. Data shows that 30% of JD customers will select this service and opt to have their orders delivered by nearby flower shops. Orders delivered by this service have increased 197% y-o-y, sales increased 286% y-o-y, and the average basket price is a record RMB 358 yuan.

Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Shandong are the top five provincial-level markets in terms of sales. Lower tier markets also saw sales surge. The top five cities in terms of sales growth are Huanggang, Qixia, Liu’an, Tianshui and Liuzhou.

In terms of demographics, 60% of consumers are male customers, and 26-31 years old age group makes up the highest proportion. Twelve-and-a-half percent of customers are above 56 years old. JD data also shows that for the week before “Qixi”, orders made remotely increased 33% y-o-y.

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)

by Martin Li

JD had maintained steady growth in sales of kitchen and bathroom appliances in the first half of this year, despite an overall slowdown in the home appliances industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sales of dish washers, integrated stoves and gas stoves increased by 58%, 57% and 34% respectively in the first half of this year, compared with the same period of last year.

On the contrary, home appliances sales across China decreased by almost 10% during the same period, among which kitchen appliance sales dropped by 20% to RMB 97.7 billion yuan, according to a JD market insights report.

During the pandemic – from January to June -the real estate  market saw a decrease of 7.6% in total area of sold homes, taking its toll on most relevant industries like kitchen and bathroom appliances. Meanwhile, consumer demand for new categories was on the rise, according to the report.

However, JD rose to account for a market share of 28.86%, according to a report published by the China Center for Information Industry Development.

JD gathered renowned kitchen and bathroom appliances brands on its e-commerce platform, including Midea, Robam, Fotile and Siemens, providing diversified categories like built-in dish washers, all-in-one machines with oven and steaming functions and vertical sterilization  cabinets.

The e-commerce giant has been also developing logistics and after-sales capabilities to improve experience of consumers in the industry.

“The industry failed to get off to a flying start at the beginning of this year. However, it started recovering from May and JD helped drive the growth, especially in sales of new categories,” said Xu Dongsheng, vice chairman of the China Household Electrical Appliance Association.

JD launched a promotional campaign for kitchen and bathroom appliances on August 28th, providing consumers with various discounts in cooperation with major brands.

 

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

 

 

 

 

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by Martin Li

JD Books has been chosen as the exclusive e-commerce partner by the organizer of the 27th Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) to support its first-ever online reading promotion campaign.

The annual book fair is due to kick off on September 26th and the online campaign started on August 26th and will last until Sept.30th.

Named World Reading Season, the campaign will feature six livestreams on JD.com and its livestreaming partner Kuaishou. The six livestream themes will be around Cuba, Arabic language, the UK, Poland, drama and picture books respectively in an effort to broaden people’s horizon by introducing diversified culture.

JD will cooperate with the fair organizer and publishers to invite professionals as hosts for each livestream to share related cultural stories, as well as recommend reading lists covering culture, music, photography and cuisine.

People can directly buy recommended books on JD’s e-commerce platform.

In addition, the campaign will also feature short videos and offline bookstore activities.

Book lovers can also visit the fair’s offline venue and buy recommended books on JD by scanning QR code.

“JD Books has a huge advantage and influence in promoting books online. Our cooperation with JD can not only give more readers access to quality books, but also give fair exhibitors better experience. The cooperation also serves as a trial for traditional publishing industry to explore new ways for promotion,” said the fair organizer.

The BIBF is the largest of its kind in China. It was inaugurated by China National Publications Import and Export (Group) Corporation in 1986.

JD is becoming increasingly popular with publishers, book sellers and writers as a channel to promote reading online. On July 31st, Chinese laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mo Yan, saw over 10,000 copies of his new book A Late Bloomer sold within only 30 minutes during a livestream by himself on JD.

 

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

 

by Ling Cao

On Chinese Valentine’s Day, Qixi, which falled on August 25^th this year, one Beijing customer, Ms. Chen bought a voucher to purchase hairy crabs on JD.com’s auction platform, for RMB 9,999 yuan. The voucher was provided from JD’s TopCrab flagship store, and can be exchanged for ten top-of-the-line crabs, five male and five female, weighing over 3 kilograms in total, as well as accessories.

When the crabs are ready, Ms. Chen can enjoy delivery by air as well as personal chef service.

Chen said that the voucher isn’t intended as a gift. She bought it for her family as they love eating crabs and spend quite a lot of money on them each year, and it is hard to find good quality ones.

JD Fresh has also launched a series of preferential policies for customers of its hairy crabs. For example, weighing the crab without the ties, offering two live crabs in compensation for any dead one – the highest level refund in the industry, price protection through year-end, and more.

Ms. Chen added, “I buy different categories on JD, and I trust the service and quality. This is my first time to buy hairy crabs there, and I have no doubts about the service level. If the experience is good this time, I will consider to buy more fresh food on JD.”

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)

by Rachel Liu

JD has upgraded Yihaodian (literally means No.1 Store) to Yihaodian Membership Store, the first online membership-only retail platform in China. Besides going “down” to target lower-tier city customers through Jingxi and offline channels such as JD Mobile stores and JD Computer and Digital stores, JD is also going “up”, providing higher quality shopping experience for customers with better income.

JD’s big data on the consumption habits of customers from six first-tier and new first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou show the following characteristics: 1) For online shopping, customers are most unsatisfied with the prices and product selection; 2) Customers like to buy high quality products frequently on more reliable e-commerce platforms; 3) Customers with higher incomes are more likely to accept membership models; 4) Though advertisements and reviews will impact customers’ decisions, the higher the incomes they earn, the less they will be impacted by these factors.

The insights show that many customers with higher incomes are demanding a better shopping experience, such as Yihaodian’s membership model. Before Yihaodian, there were no such online membership e-commerce platforms in China. Yihaodian provides carefully selected high-quality products based on big data, reviews and customers’ feedback, with the most competitive prices. Customers with higher income are usually have less time to browse for products. In this way, customers can easily find the products they want and save their time. Yihaodian’s services such as membership fee insurance, 24/7 customer service and free refunds can make customers’ shopping experience hassle-free. The logic behind Yihaodian’s business model is to focus on all aspects of the customer experience and ensure its high quality.

Upgrading Yihaodian is new move for JD’s membership programs. Since JD launched its JD PLUS membership program in 2015, it has gathered rich experience in operating paid membership programs. Another advantage for Yihaodian is that it can leverage JD’s years of accumulation in e-commerce operations and supply chain capabilities, which is particularly important, as a strong supply chain can ensure lower operations costs as Yihaodian expands.

Yihaodian was founded in 2008 as a B2C e-commerce platform that mainly sells groceries. Walmart first invested in Yihaodian in 2011. In 2016, JD acquired Yihaodian as part of its deepened partnership with Walmart.

 

(liuchang61@jd.com)