by Yuchuan Wang

 With the help of JD, Fujian province-cultivated eel enterprises have found a new sales channel via JD’s sales approach. From February to June, sales of Fujian eel products increased 451% year-on-year on JD, with many eel farmers and manufacturers making up for losses incurred due to COVID-19.

Fujian is a major province for eel cultivation in China. In the past, 70% of Fujian eel was exported to Japan, U.S. and other overseas markets. But this year, the eel industry in Fujian suffered heavy losses on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, and exports decreased to less than half of that of previous years. At the same time, the domestic catering market was also impacted, resulting in the sharp contraction of domestic eel sales.

To help farmers sell their inventory amidst the pandemic, JD.com launched the “National Fresh Produce Green Channel” in February. The initiative also helped local eel companies well to the domestic market through JD’s e-commerce platform.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Many eel enterprises simply moved their products online without considering that many Chinese consumers do not know how to prepare eel. To boost sales and make it easier for consumers to do it, JD.com guided Fujian’s eel enterprises to develop ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat eel products.

“Based on JD’s big data insights, we developed the roast eel ready-to-eat product. On the first day of its launch during JD.com’s 618 Grand Promotion, we sold out of all roast eel products,” said Jianli Wang, sales manager of Sandugang, a Fujian-based eel producing and manufacturing company. On June 18^th, transaction volume of eel products on JD was nearly RMB 1 million yuan.

During 618, JD opened up an exclusive sales and logistics channels for seafood like eel. These efforts have helped Fujian eel farmers resolve key sales challenges.

This August, JD held an “eel season” sales event online. The company hopes to bring more quality seafood to its consumers and continuously drive sales for merchants, facilitating the recovery of more enterprises.

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

by Martin Li

A recent livestream event on JD.com co-hosted by renowned Chinese comedy filmmaker and actor Xu Zheng saw 2,000 RMB10-yuan movie ticket coupons given away to viewers.

They can use the coupons to buy tickets on JD.com.

The livestream was launched by China Movie Channel as a push for people to support China’s movie industry, which has been on pause since February due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cinemas across China have been reopening gradually and cities like Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai and Guangzhou have raised the limit on seat occupancy to 50% (from 30% previously) and cancelled the mandatory intermission for 120-minute-long movies.

The livestream event was also joined by Du Chunyang, senior director of the film and performance business unit of JD Life.

“JD will provide more discounted film tickets online and bring more benefits to JD Plus members (in terms of movie consumption),” said Du.

JD Plus is JD’s premium membership program.

JD launched its online movie ticket sales business in 2012 and has been committed to supporting the industry since. It took only three days for JD to launch real-name registration for online ticket buyers – as required by the government – after cinemas resumed operation in low-risk areas on July 20^th.

In addition, JD has also helped promote new movies with the help of its huge traffic resources.

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

by Rachel Liu

On August 5^th, JD launched an updated service package for mobile phone buyers. It includes five services: 30-day return, one-hour delivery, free-trial, trade-in and “30365” service. The package is provided in advance of the upcoming JD Mobile Phone Festival on August 18^th. One week after the launch, orders of mobile trade-in services on JD increased over 50% compared with before.

The 30-day return service means that customers can return a mobile phone within 30 days of ordering as long as the phone has not been damaged. The one-hour delivery is a service that JD provides with JDDJ (JD Daojia), China’s leading local on-demand retail platform. JD customers can shop for products through JDDJ, and the brick and mortar stores will deliver the products to customers in as fast as in one hour. The “free-trial” service allows customers to try products for seven days and return them if they are not satisfied. The “trade-in” service enables customers to trade-in their old phones and deduct the trade-in price from the cost of new phone. The “30365” service ensures customers get a full refund if their phones have hardware problems within 30 days after the orders are made or get a brand new product if there are problems within the first year. More and more brands and products are joining the service project to provide a better shopping experience to JD customers.

On JD’s Super Honor Day on August 6th, over 150,000 customers enjoyed service products on JD, saving over RMB 4 million yuan. In JD’s vivo flagship store, vivo S7 which joined the service program, received 97% positive reviews. Some of the customers’ comments on mobile phones say that things along the lines of, “I received the product within one hour”; “I made two purchases and they both arrived very fast”.

With the online mobile phone market becoming more mature, competitive price is not the only factor affecting customers’ choices. It’s especially important to provide exceptional customer service to increase customers’ loyalty to e-commerce platforms.

(liuchang61@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

JD.com launched a leasing service for computers and digital products targeting small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Through JD’s leasing platform, enterprise users can rent many types of office computers at favorable prices, for instance, ThinkPadE14 at RMB 99/month, ThinkPadL13 at RMB198/month and ThinkCentre K70 desktop at RMB128/month. This innovative leasing business model comes at a time when many SMEs in China are facing operations and cash flow pressures in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery.

To ensure users can enjoy smooth operation and data security while they use the rental hardware, the JD Computer and Digital Products business unit will provide professional and timely operation and maintenance support.

This leasing service is especially suitable for SMEs looking to expand their business scale and channels network, participate in exhibitions, organize temporary projects or host marketing events, among other usage scenarios. In these situations, renting is a more sensible solution than buying, helping enterprises to reduce cash flow pressure and avoid a range of IT purchase and management challenges.

“We hope that through an innovative business model like the leasing service, JD can help SMEs to improve their capital utilization efficiency so as to overcome the financial difficulties they may be facing at present,” said Xiaobo Guo, general manager of the enterprise business unit of JD Computer and Digital Products.

According to Guo, JD has been committed to providing one-stop product and service solutions for its enterprise customers. The JD-initiated leasing service helps advance China’s leasing market, which is still at a nascent stage with less than 5% market penetration.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

by Rachel Liu

Newly released data shows that from July 6^th to 12^th, JD sold four million ice cream products. Sales of ice cream increased over 16 times on July 10^th, which was the Super Ice Cream Day on JD. Nearly 400 types of ice cream products from 30 brands were rolled out on JD during the promotion.

Traditionally, customers like to buy ice cream in convenience stores or community stores instead of online because they are worried that ice cream will melt during transportation. JD’s cold-chain logistics and fast delivery, however, allow customers to order ice cream online with peace of mind. JD has launched a series of services for ice cream lovers on JD, including melt insurance and scheduled purchase. Scheduled purchase allows customers to choose how often they want to receive products and how many they want each time. JD Logistics will deliver the products based on their personal needs.

Interesting Trends on Ice Cream Consumption:

• On JD, crossover ice cream products receive great popularity, as they are usually unique and innovative. For example, Chinese ice cream brand Chicecream and Zongzi (rice cake that Chinese eat on Dragon Boat Festival) brand Wufangzhai jointly launched a “barley leaves” (leaves used to make Zongzi) flavor ice cream. Sales of the product increased 106% during the promotion comparing with the same period in June.

• Customers like to buy mini size ice cream, such as mini Magnum and mini Cornetto. More and more families like to buy ice cream online, and mini size ice cream is suitable for children to eat.
• Sales of ice cream by post-1995s and post 2000s customers increased 17 times y-o-y. They have become the fastest growing group among all customers.
• Sales increase of ice cream in lower-tier cities is 15 times that of first-tier cities.
• The peak for customers to order ice cream is midnight, as the coupons are usually release at 12:00 am on JD, and many customers treat online shopping as a way to release pressure before going to bed.

(liuchang61@jd.com)