On June 1st, the first day of JD’s 618 Grand Promotion, transaction volume of fresh food increased over 8 times year-on-year. Among the many best-selling products is durian, a seasonal fruit that is increasingly welcomed by Chinese consumers. In the first hour of 618, transaction volume of durian on JD increased over 17 times compared with the same period last year.
In Asia, durian is known as the “king of fruits.” As early as in April this year, JD imported multiple durian varieties from Thailand including the popular Golden Pillow, rare Puangmanee and Chanee. The total volume filled thirty 40ft containers.
Every durian imported by JD goes through a comprehensive screening process. In the early stages of picking, JD.com’s fresh food business team will cooperate with growers directly to ensure quality.
“During the epidemic, we specifically worked on a stricter quality control plan. To put it simply, every durian from Thailand needs to go through at least six testing procedures and meet over 10 specifications before it can be delivered to our customers,” said Wen Li from JD Fresh’s quality control team.
JD will typically pick the durian to be exported to China when it is about 75% ripe, so that the durian is tastiest 7 days later when it arrives. Once at JD’s warehouse in China, the fruit will need to pass several evaluations, ensuring, for example, that the fruit cracks at the standard diameter, ripeness, weight, shape and sweetness meet the standard, and more. Durian that does not pass the evaluation screening will not go for sale on JD. Even after being accepted to JD’s warehouse, JD’s quality control team will do regular checks to make sure every durian sold to its customers is of high quality.
JD Fresh includes a note with every box of durian about how to enjoy durian
Durians are most popular in first and second-tier Chinese cities like Beijing and Guangzhou, but demand is growing in lower-tier regions where previously the fruit was not easily accessible.
As China’s largest fresh food retail platform, JD now offers 320,000 SKUs (stock-keeping-units) covering seafood, fruit, vegetables, meat and poultry and more from over 50 countries and regions. JD offers various fresh food, including durians from Thailand and Malaysia, through its online channel JD Fresh and offline supermarket chain 7FRESH.
JD Health has been the focus of the internet industry since it was spun off from JD.com last year. According to Crunchbase, the world’s leading platform for business information of private and public companies, it is the second largest unicorn after Uber in 2019. The outbreak of COVID-19 has made more Chinese people aware of JD Health. Many people might be curious about Lijun Xin, CEO of JD Health. Let’s look at Lijun Xin’s personal experience and healthy world closely.
From IT business to Internet health services
Lijun Xin is full of curiosity and a quick learner. After graduating from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1995, Xin worked as a teacher for four years and then entered the IT industry for seven years. After that, he started his own business for eight years until he joined JD.com in 2012. At that time, JD.com only had its retail business, and the burden of developing a third-party platform business fell to Xin.
Eight years later, he successfully developed the business logic of JD.com’s third-party platform business, and constantly expanded its business categories, from apparel to cars, real estate, art, health, and so on. Xin has served as the person in charge of these businesses. In July 2019, he officially became CEO of JD Health.
Taking over the role to lead JD Health
Before becoming CEO of JD Health, Lijun Xin was invited by Richard Liu, Chairman and CEO of JD.com, to the suburbs of Beijing for a chat. Liu had two requests. The first was to provide healthcare services for JD’s staff, and the other is to focus on necessary investment of health industry at the initial stage, rather than on profits. Liu’s requirement for JD Health’s KPIs was not performance figures, but rather the level of customer satisfaction. For Internet services and products, it has always been difficult to objectively quantify user satisfaction, so this presented a great challenge for Xin.
In the more than eight years he has worked at JD.com, Xin has remained relatively low profile. But after taking over the business of JD Health, both he and the business have come into the spotlight. JD Health has achieved the most complete Internet + medical and health layout in the industry, and its products and services cover not only the entire pharmaceutical industry chain, but the entire user life cycle for health management. JD Health’s retail business currently accounts for more than 15% of China’s national pharmaceutical retail market. Coupled with the previously disclosed A-round financing of more than US$1 billion, JD Health has become JD’s third unicorn after JD Digits and JD Logistics.
Internet hospital
JD.com first tried non-pharmaceutical health e-commerce in 2013, and began to expand its pharmaceutical business in 2015. The company later discovered that when consumers buy drugs, there is a need to consult with doctors for guidance. So in 2017, JD began to focus on Internet hospitals, which is a closed-loop and relatively complete business, and continued to further expand its business categories.
Xin explains that just as the Internet experienced explosive growth in 2000, and the outbreak of COVID-19 this year is likely to promote the development of the entire Internet medical industry. The development of Internet medical consulting and treatment in China has been full of twists and turns in terms of policy and promotion in the past decade. For example, it may not easy for most public hospitals to build their Internet hospitals on their own, nor do they have the operations capability to provide services directly to patients.
In Xin’s view, it works better for hospitals to embrace cooperation with internet companies with an open mind. Take the Internet hospital jointly built with JD.com as an example. Doctors in the hospital can do medical consulting online. JD’s 387 million active users can consult with the doctors online, thus directly expanding the “doctor’s office” from one region to the whole country.
Due to the epidemic, national policies towards Internet medical consulting and treatment, Internet hospital, and medical insurance payment are becoming more and more open. This means that for many things that would have taken another three to five years to realize are now possible in three months. From a historical point of view, this is great progress.
On January 26th, JD Health launched a free online consultation platform to prevent COVID-19 and took the lead in expanding the scope of free consultation to all disease areas in all departments in the Internet field, with more than 30, 000 doctors to provide free professional online-consultation to all users throughout the country.
From the beginning of the epidemic to early May, JD Health online consultation platform served a total of more than 11 million users, with an average daily consultation volume of more than 120,000. Before the epidemic, the average daily consultation volume reached about 60, 000, even if the epidemic has been basically under control now, the average daily consultation volume remained close to 100,000.
To support chronic disease patients, JD launched the “Chronic Disease Care Program,” which allows chronic patients to renew prescriptions through the company’s online consultation platform. It has also partnered with 70 Chinese and foreign pharmaceutical companies to jointly ensure the supply of drugs for chronic disease groups. Drugs can be delivered by JD Logistics directly to users.
In addition, JD Health launched a “Global Free Health consultation platform” at the end of March, providing free online consultation services to people all over the world. Hundreds of doctors, including 38 doctors who participated in the treatment of the epidemic in Hubei, and more than 30 Chinese medicine experts, share anti-epidemic experience and prevention knowledge for overseas people on this platform. As of April 12th, the platform has received a total of more than 170,000 inquiries from overseas, including more than 10, 000 English inquiries and more than 6.7 million visits.
The tip of the iceberg
JD Health’s current business can be divided into four parts: online pharmacy, online healthcare, health services and intelligent healthcare solutions, of which the most matured one is the online pharmacy business. However, Xin believes that the future development direction of JD Health will put health management as the core. “I hope that in about three years, my team will build JD Health into the most reliable platform for chronic disease management and healthcare services for users.”
“In the past, the business model of JD Health was more like a pharmaceutical e-commerce business, but if we can’t guide and manage the whole life cycle of users, we can’t become a real healthcare-service company,” Xin explains. In his eyes, JD Health will open up the whole industry chain, integrate medical resources of all parties, and provide users with products and services that run through the whole life cycle and cover all health scenarios.
Xin plans to take two steps to achieve that objective. First, JD Health will try to make the connection between users and JD Health with high frequency, enable the users to have the awareness of JD Health’s services, trust JD Health and rely on JD Health’s services eventually. Secondly, JD Health will provide full-process services, whether it is pharmaceutical services in the supply chain or long-term management of chronic diseases. JD Health will combine the advantageous specialties of major public hospitals across the country to carry out specialized disease management for chronic diseases, such as cardio-cerebrovascular, diabetes, and mental diseases.
On the whole, the health management status of most Chinese people is still in its infancy. Xin is also aware of this reality. “The health sector is worth more than RMB 10 trillion in China, and now we have touched only the tip of the iceberg.” He hopes to work with competitors to make this market bigger and better, so that Chinese consumers can develop the new format and habit of health management.
As CEO of JD Health, Xin is mindful of the relationship between his busy work schedule and his physical health. He loves sports and takes part in the football activities of JD.com’s football club every Wednesday. When organizing a team building event, he will often propose athletic activities such as skiing. According to his team members, Xin calmly and confidently tackles double black diamonds on the ski slopes.
Talking about JD Health’s mission for users, Xin said, “In fact, it is very simple. When users download the JD Health app, they will give their lives to us. Normally users will not think of us, they will only think of us when they are sick. But we are worthy of users’ trust and can solve their pain points. At that time, I think we will succeed.”
JD kicked off its 17th 618 Grand Promotion on June 1st. Home appliances, including air conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines saw sales surge. Customers are pursuing health-centered products after the COVID-19 outbreak. Data shows that purification and sterilization air conditioner sales increased 10 times YOY during June 1-2, sterilization refrigerator and washing machine sales increased 550% YOY. Each of 30 brand of air conditioner products hit RMB 10 million in just 10 minutes on June 1st. In just one hour, sales of high-end refrigerators and washing machines from brands like Casarte, Siemens and LG increased nearly 8 times y-o-y. During June 1-2, outbound orders for hot-selling air conditioners from JD’s warehouse increased nearly 270% compared with daily average during the last week in May.
The coronavirus also changed the way people purchase home appliances. Industry data shows that in Q1 2020, online home appliance sales accounted for 55.8% of total home appliance retail sales, which was the first time this percentage had surpassed 50% benchmark, while JD’s home appliances accounted for 29.1% of total sales nationwide, making JD the top home appliance retailer online or offline in China.
JD will continue to offer discounts and benefits for home appliances customers during 618 and ensure a smooth shopping experience even during the peak sales period. JD can do this because it focuses on how to build long-term sustainable advantage. One key factor is JD’s supply chain. For bulky items like home appliances, in addition to high-quality products, guaranteed service covering fulfillment, installation and post-sale is also essential to attract customers.
An integrated and leading bulky supply chain as a Guardian
JD has built an integrated bulky supply chain infrastructure, which is one of core differentiators for the company to be able to dominate the industry. Due to factors such as the large size of products, high value and non-standardization of SKUs, it is common that the inventory might be stored in various warehouses and transfer of goods is necessary. Those issues lead to increased difficulties in fulfilment and higher door-to-door transportation costs. Consequently, the customer experience tends to be negatively impacted. With the large quantity of bulky orders made during 618, it is a significant challenge to the reliability of JD’s bulky supply chain system.
JD leveraged its integrated warehousing and logistics network to put some of the bulky products from the brands’ factories in JD’s warehouses nationwide ahead of time, and leveraged its big data for inventory replenishment, and accurately predicted the shopping habits and preferences of customers. Haier, the domestic leading home appliances brand is one of the key cooperation examples. Both parties have cooperated on the forward warehouse since last Singles Day (November 11th), and now JD has opened nearly all of its forward warehouse resources to them, allocating about 300,000 square meters of space to Haier. This allowed JD to prepare the proper amount of each SKU in each warehouse in its seven regional areas, which made it possible to deliver the orders from warehouses closest to customers, hence greatly improving fulfilment efficiency.
Due to the uncertainty of the virus situation, many merchants didn’t prepare enough inventory for 618 before April. When the situation gradually stabilized in China, customer demand increased, forcing many merchants to adjust their inventory strategy to add more products for 618. The factories also rapidly ramped up production. This resulted in a large amount of inventory added to JD warehouses within a short time period. Thanks to JD’s technology expertise, the company was able to do sales forecasting and prepare additional fulfillment resources in advance. For the first time, JD implemented “batching” for its AI-powered pre-order technology to help improve book delivery. The system is able to complete 50,000 intelligent voice interactions per hour and increase efficiency throughout the whole bulky supply chain.
Building strength and innovation based on customer experience
JD’s home appliances team has focused heavily on customer experience since the beginning. “Smart, high-end, tailored and healthy are the key trends for the air conditioner industry.” said Kening Wu, head of the air conditioner sales department at JD. “To some degree, the epidemic has made customers care more about health. Our data shows that keywords searching for sterilization air conditioner in March is over 26 times than that of February. Sales of all the health related home appliances from late January to now are three times that of the same period last year.” He added.
As more and more customers have individualized demands, JD also leverages big data to forecast the most suitable product for them. For example, JD saw many customers’ comments which showed interest in aesthetically pleasing air conditioners. One innovative idea was born immediately: Why not cooperate with a certain IP (such as a movie) or designer to decorate the exterior on an air conditioner so that it’s not just pure white? Why not design a gaming-themed exterior to make the product more appealing to millennials? “These types of C2M products are currently in the works. You always need to think one step ahead to stable your position in industry,” Wu commented. One industry data shows that apart from cooling capabilities, appearance is the second priority criterion for customers, accounting for 33.7% of concerns.
JD has cooperated with 63 home appliance brands covering 200 kinds of products for C2M home appliances, including leading brands such as TCL, Midea and Little Swan. Late last year, JD cooperated with Little Swan on tailored baby and maternal wall-mounted type washing machine and sold on JD exclusively online. Both companies started to develop this project since late 2018. During the process, JD has done extensive customer research and big data analysis, which found that there was huge demand for this feature. The product, launched in 2019, remains popular and received good review from customers. One customer commented, “The small wall-mounted washing machine with disinfection and drying functions looks very cute, I bought it for soon-to-be born baby.” C2M will certainly be one of the key trends to promote stable development for the home appliances industry.
“The capability to utilize feedback from our user profiles and help them design requirement-based products is one of our key advantages, thus C2M will be our core strategy going forward. Besides, we have different measures to target different customers. For example, we recommend smaller washing machines for those who live alone.” added Shuangxi Wu, head of refrigerators and washing machines sales department at JD.com.
Another challenge is how to maintain sales volume as home appliances have an 8-10-year lifecycle. Wu shared, “We also found there are opportunities for a second home appliance need, such as baby and maternal small washing machine to separate washing tasks, as well as new emerging categories, such as an ice bar to stock several bottles of beverages. These are also two of the fastest growth categories in my business. The other one is dryers.”
Replacing an old product for a new one is also a trend. According to industry data, in 2019, there were 430 million air conditioners at Chinese households (which is equivalent to one AC per family if China’s entire population were divided into families of three). The huge number also means that there is great potential for consumers to make replacements. Industry data also shows that in 2020, over 52 million air conditioners exceed their recommended safe usage period. JD data also showed customer awareness of this demand – over 43% of customers who buy home appliances are replacing old ones.
Although home appliances is a traditional category, it has embraced new marketing tools like live streaming, which has grown fast during COVID-19. Brands also cooperate with JD for joint events. For example, on May 15th, Mingzhu Dong, chairwoman of Gree Electric joined a livestream for Gree products on JD. From 8:00 pm to 11:20 pm, the livestream generated RMB 703 million yuan (nearly US$100 million) in sales. On May 20th, Haier joined JD’s home appliances livestreaming and added 470,000 followers to its JD store on the day. For 618, there will be more livestreaming to help boost home appliances sales.
Omichannel: a new strategy especially in lower tier markets
JD has over 12,000 home appliances experience stores around China. They play an important role in ensuring customer experience, especially in lower-tier markets where consumers may not be as accustomed to buying them online. The function of these stores is not just to sell products, but also to serve as an offline experience and after-sales service center. “E-commerce penetration in lower tier markets still needs to be cultivated. The experience stores help JD provide our rich home appliances products to these customers, and is the best way to combine our products with an omnichannel sales strategy,” said Wu.
Customers also prefer this way of shopping. One JD home appliances experience store in Chaoyang, Liaoning province, a fourth tier city, reached RMB 1 million yuan in sales on June 1st through WeChat promotion, live streaming, offline events, and more.
In addition, JD’s largest immersive experience store E-Space in Chongqing will also participate in 618, providing customers with subsidies and discounts. From May 30th to June 1st, E-Space visitors increased 300% compared with same period last month. Sales hit RMB 20 million, resuming to the level before the virus.
“During the COVID-19 epidemic, JD is the best retail platform in China and even in the whole world to support people’s livelihoods. As of this 618, we hope to continue our superb performance to benefit more consumers and our partners. ”
——Lei Xu, CEO of JD Retail
June 18th is JD.com’s birthday.
More than two decades ago, in 1998, 25-year-old Richard Liu committed RMB 12,000 yuan of his savings and leased a four-square-meter retail booth in Beijing’s technology hub of Zhongguancun. In a mall called “Haikai Market” (海开市场), he established JD Multimedia (京东多媒体), selling authentic-only laser products when many other peddlers haggling with customers and fake products were prevalent.
Today, not only has JD become China’s largest retailer, but the 618 promotion, named after June 18th to celebrate JD’s own anniversary, has turned into the largest nationwide mid-year shopping festival. It is joined by numerous e-commerce platforms and offline retail giants, and even catering and shopping establishments. It can be said that 618 has become one of the symbols of China’s rapid economic development.
Total transaction volume during JD.com’s 618 in 2019 reached new heights of RMB 201.5 billion yuan (US$29.2 billion), and served 750 million customers worldwide
618 in early days – an untended willow grows
When the SARS outbreak affected China in 2003, JD founder Richard Liu saw an opportunity, amid the challenges, to harness the potential of the Internet to support his business. In 2004, JD was moved online. June 18, 2004 is now considered JD’s first 618 promotion. Back then, the company launched flash sales to give back to its customers, charging just RMB 1 yuan for an RMB 100 yuan keyboard, for example.
At that time, discussion boards were the main channel for JD to communicate with its customers. Richard found that many customers would post shopping inquiries at night. Inspired by that, in 2005, JD launched a campaign in accordance with its anniversary period in June that offered big deals late at night for loyal customers. At the time, a large number of JD customers would postpone their shopping plans just to wait for JD’s anniversary celebration.
No doubt, JD has an obsession over customer experience. In order to deliver a superior shopping experience, JD started to build its in-house logistics network, managing every step of the supply chain, right through to the “last-mile” delivery. The unique retail + self-operated logistics model began to win over consumers. Although industry players and media criticized this “heavy” assets model at that time, customers knew where to find authentic products. They also knew JD was able to deliver the same or next day, something that no other platform can do. JD’s long-term persistence has led to its continued success: JD Logistics has become one of the most valuable properties of the e-commerce giant; and competitors building their own logistics arms were imitating JD’s business model.
Inside JD’s Asia No.1 logistics park
With the completion of two rounds of financing in 2009, JD recruited a team of executives with professional backgrounds. Lei Xu, current CEO of JD Retail joined the company as the head of marketing. He is the third vice president of JD.
With Xu’s on-board, JD.com for the first time promoted 618 as a marketing concept on a large scale basis in 2009 and it saw an inspiring sales result: sales volume on June 18th surpassed RMB 30 million yuan, and the number of orders was over 45,000. That same year, Alibaba kicked off its first Single’s Day (also known as double 11 or 11.11) sales promotion on November 11th with 27 participating brands.
At the annual meeting in 2009, Richard Liu announced, “As of 6 pm, December 31, 2009, we have 2,206 employees.” The number was more than twice that of the previous year.
In 2011, JD extended the 618 promotion from a one-day event to a whole month celebration. At the same time, in addition to its traditional core category electronics, grocery, for the first time joined the promotion. Consumers spontaneously built a “618 shopping discussion” on Tianya Club, the most popular Chinese BBS in the 2000s, as well as the Douban and Weibo platforms, making 618 a heated topic among netizens. On June 18th 2011, JD’s sales volume exceeded RMB 200 million yuan, setting a record for daily sales of e-commerce in China. The innovative month-long promotion also brought greater impact to both consumers and China’s e-commerce industry.
As JD further introduced the books and apparel categories at its platform, competitors at that time, such as Tmall, SUNING, Quba and Dangdang, swarmed into the 618 battlefield in 2012. The addition of the JD Book business not only restrained Amazon and Dangdang, but also greatly reduced the threshold for new users to shop on JD.com, while the addition of apparel also stung some competitors.
JD (known as 360buy at that time) couriers preparing for 618, 2011
Booming 618 – indispensable investment in technology
“At 11:59pm, my heart pounds violently.” Said Shang Xin, a senior director of JD Retail’s R&D team.
In the early morning of June 18, 2019, there were hundreds of R&D staffs at JD’s temporary tech preparation center designed specifically for 618, preparing for the most nervous moment of the year. Traffic reached its peak instantly at 00:00 and then stabilized gradually.
But 10 years ago, JD’s R&D was faced with unprecedented challenges for every big promotion. The challenges with technology infrastructure and traffic growth broke out in 2011. On June 18th, JD’s website crashed due to a sudden surge of orders. “We could do nothing but keep adding servers. Unfortunately, even adding three- or four-times the number of servers was useless. The situation lasted for seven or eight hours. Our R&D guys was completely lost.” Said Shang.
Zhai Songtao, from the JD-Y Smart Supply Chain business unit, remembers that “We were using an excel table to calculate sales predictions and purchasing amounts manually.” She continued, “At that time, none of our best sales managers could cover more than 2,000 SKUs (stock-keeping-units).” There are currently millions of first party (1P, referring to JD’s retail business model where it buys and stocks goods in its warehouses and delivers them to end customers) SKUs offered on JD.
618 command center at JD’s HQ in Beijing, 2016
The technical weakness threatened the reputation of JD’s user experience. The company immediately upgraded its tech architecture and planned for a middle-platform strategy to keep up with the fast-growing business scale.
JD’s sales managers are now empowered with big data and AI technologies that can help them predict sales, formulate price strategies and even promotion models automatically. The adoption of smart supply chain keeps improving JD’s operations efficiency. JD also shares its customer insights with brand owners and merchants, guiding their manufacturing and productions process and ultimately providing a superior user experience that enables customers to get the right product at the right time and right place. During last year’s 618, JD did not add a single server, not because the traffic growth was less, but because of its technological middle platform, which secures stable operations during the peak season.
In 2019, total investment by listed and unlisted affiliates of JD exceeded RMB 17.9 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion). JD’s technology investment is continuously improving the company’s operations efficiency, cost and user experience.
An open and inclusive 618
In 2014, JD.com became China’s first major e-commerce company to list on Nasdaq. 618 gradually became a brand asset under Lei Xu’s leadership as the marketing head. A 20-day celebration was formed and continues through today. The distribution of the sales over 20 days also helps relieve stress on customers, giving them more time to make purchases.
That year, JD announced it would welcome industry players to join the celebration. 618 ultimately became a national shopping carnival in China.
In 2017, JD advocated a “boundary-less retail” strategy and announced to further open 618 brand to any partners, and continued to build its technology and retail infrastructures. Brick-and-mortars began joining the “boundary-less retail alliance”. In 2018, over 500,000 offline stores participated in the 618 grand promotion, including offline supermarket giants Wal-Mart, Yonghui, BBK, Yintai and Rt-Mart.
618 advertising banners at Yonghui supermarket, 2017
In 2019, over 220,000 online merchants, millions of offline stores and over 5 million logistics and crowdsourcing service personnel in China contributed to JD’s 618. In the same year, Tmall announced it would participate in 618 with an unprecedented scale, and latecomer Pinduoduo also officially entered the big show.
This year, JD.com ushered in its 17th anniversary. Kicked off on June 1st, it is the first large nationwide shopping festival post-epidemic. The company announced it would have a sales promotion with the largest amount of discounts, the best shopping experience, the strongest brand growth opportunity, and the most new product launches ever.
Together, 618 and Singles’ Day form the mid-year and end-of-year peak. 618 witnessed the development of JD.com and JD.com has witnessed the trend of Chinese consumption. The rising number in transaction volume has embodied China’s vigorous growth online and offline.
On June 5th, JD celebrated the third anniversary of the Green Stream Initiative. This month, the first demonstration park for trash sorting at JD’s Beijing Asia No.1 logistics park will be launched, including labels with trash disposal guidance for packages, and arrange a special area for trash sorting. The project serves as a trial at JD’s own logistics parks, as well as a way to educate customers when they receive orders.
On June 4th, JD Health formally reached a strategic cooperation with Eisai China, the world’s leading multinational pharmaceutical company. The two sides will integrate Eisai’s international experience, expertise and innovative medical solutions in the treatment of a variety of diseases with JD Health’s medicine e-commerce, Internet hospital and other businesses to create the industry’s first one-stop online service platform focusing on providing a full range of medical, health and life services for the elderly.
Customers in Taiwan can now collect their parcels for free at almost 5,000 local convenience stores after making purchases on JD’s e-commerce platform during the ongoing 618 Grand Promotion. The free collection applies to any RMB 99-yuan purchase weighing less than five kilograms, and orders made on JD’s direct-to-customer platform.
G-SHOCK and Hamilton have joined hands with JD to set up countdown clocks for JD’s 618 Grand Promotion from June 1st at JD’s Beijing headquarters and Shanghai’s BenQ Commercial Plaza, respectively.
On June 1st, the first day of JD’s 618 Grand Promotion, JD held an executive livestreaming joined by Liu Jun, Executive Vice President of Lenovo Group and President of Lenovo China, Yan Xiaobing, Senior Vice President of JD.com and President of JD Electronics and Home Appliance and Wang Zijian, a Chinese actor, to promote Lenovo’s products on JD. The livestream attracted over 1.2 million viewers and achieved sales of over RMB 100 million yuan.
JD has introduced the very first automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) for bulky items in Asia’s e-commerce industry, located at the company’s Asia No. 1 logistics park in Langfang, Hebei province. The park in Lanfang is one of three new highly automated Asia No. 1 parks JD has put into operation during this year’s 618 Grand Promotion.
JD.com and ExxonMobil announced a strategic cooperation recently. The two sides will fully integrate in the areas of products, services, marketing and membership to create a new format of car maintenance and service in the digital era, and comprehensively enhance consumers’ experience.
On June 6th, Beijing Municipal Government officially launched “Beijing Consumption Season” on Wangfujing Street, the most popular downtown business district. Song Xuewen, a JD courier, along with sales representatives, community workers, and members of the medical team that supported Wuhan, joined China Central Television (CCTV) and government officials for the ceremony.
Beginning at 10am, four well-known anchors from CCTV and Beijing TV joined a JD livestream to promote quality goods to consumers. In the three-hour event, JD sold RMB 1.39 billion yuan in products.
The first batch of Beijing e-consumption voucherswere concurrently issued through JD’s app. Numerous orders were placed in the first minute. The first order placed online using an e-voucher was for a Huawei P40 5G mobile phone, offered through JD’s 618 promotion. At 10:12, the first offline consumption using the voucher was redeemed.
According to JD’s data, the average basket size for online orders using e-vouchers for smart products is over 3,500 yuan, and primarily includes smart terminals, smart home, smart healthcare and audio and video devices. The e-voucher for offline catering and shopping establishments brought an average of 13.1 visitors to shops participating in the event.
The issue of Beijing’s e-vouchers through JD.com demonstrates the company’s strong advantages in supply chain and ability to effectively connect online and offline scenarios. JD can provide one-stop technology and services to offline stores for the use, write off and settlement of e-vouchers.
On June 4th, JD Health formally reached a strategic cooperation with Eisai China, the world’s leading multinational pharmaceutical company.
The two sides will integrate Eisai’s international experience, expertise and innovative medical solutions in the treatment of a variety of diseases with JD Health’s medicine e-commerce, Internet hospital and other businesses to create the industry’s first one-stop online service platform focusing on providing a full range of medical, health and life services for the elderly.
The two sides will cooperate in simplifying the medical treatment process, shortening medicine supply chain, promoting online and offline education on diseases, the creation of a health ecosystem for the elderly, public welfare projects, and other projects. Together, JD Health and Eisai China are committed to providing patients with more intimate and convenient medical and health services and more efficient professional solutions to comprehensively improve the quality of life of the elderly.
“JD Health has built the widest and most complete ‘Internet + Medical + Health’ ecosystem and the most complete pharmaceutical supply chain system in the industry and can provide professional warehousing, logistics and customer service services for the products on the newly built online service platform,” Lijun Xin, CEO of JD Health said. “JD Health and Eisai China will jointly build this online platform focusing on medical and health services for the elderly to achieve full coverage of the medical process, health scenarios and the user lifecycle of elderly people.”
Yanhui Feng, Vice President of Eisai Global and General Manager of Eisai China said, “As a global leading pharmaceutical company, Eisai has the world’s leading academic resources in the neurological field, rich product pipelines, a positive reputation in the market, and a professional academic team. The cooperation with JD Health represents a strong alliance. At the same time, Eisai has mature operations and service experience in Japanese pensions, nursing and other industries as well as services for the elderly, and the model can be used as a reference for the China market. The two sides will work together to meet the challenges brought about by the aging of Chinese society and jointly contribute to the construction of a ‘healthy China’.”
JD’s annual 618 Grand Promotion started on June 1st. In the first five minutes, sales of Moutai products increased 118 times y-o-y.
Moutai‘s outstanding flavor has made it one of the most popular liquor brands in China. Every year the amount of Moutai that can be sold on market is limited. As such, it is not just a product for consumption, but also for collection. JD’s partnership with Moutai started in 2014, and this March, JD deepened its partnership with Kweichow Moutai to source products directly from the brand. JD got the largest quota of Moutai products among all retailers in China, reinforcing its position as a reliable source for Chinese consumers to buy Moutai.
Now, Moutai’s popular products, such as 43% alcohol Moutai, Chennian Moutai and classic 53% alcohol Feitian Moutai, which is the hardest to get, are all available on JD. Getting a bottle of Moutai to a JD customer is not a simple process, and JD and Moutai have worked closely to ensure that all customers can buy Moutai on JD with peace of mind, and in a fair way. This cannot be achieved without JD’s commitment to authenticity, self-built logistics system and leading retail technology.
Before June 1st, the first day of JD’s June 18 Grand Promotion, every day at 10 a.m., members of JD’s premium membership, JD PLUS were able to buy 53% alcohol. After June 1st, sales of the product open up from time to time. Each customer can only buy two bottles at a time, and no more than five bottles in a single month. Purchase is only open to customers who have had their real names verified, ensuring no customer can register multiple accounts to buy the product. The product will be sold out in a few seconds every time. To prevent scalpers from trying to game the system, in 2017, JD launched an “anti-scalper” system for Moutai products. Leveraging big data to analyze customers’ browsing history, demographic, location, and occupation, the system can automatically distinguish scalpers from real customers. So far, it has intercepted over 100,000 scalpers’ orders.
The entire transportation of Moutai products is done by JD Logistics. JD Logistics will pick up the products from Moutai and store them in JD’s own warehouses, making sure the products are safely stored and ultimately delivered to the consumer. Since June 2018, JD.com has launched a blockchain traceability system for Moutai. All Moutai products have JD’s exclusive traceability codes. After receiving their Moutai products, consumers can scan the code with the JD app or WeChat, and see the complete journey of the product, including when and where the product entered JD’s warehouse and all the steps in the transportation process, re-assuring customers that the product is authentic. JD shares traceability data with Moutai every month to improve the system with Moutai experts. After the beginning the traceability program, customers’ satisfaction on shopping experience has improved significantly to over 99%.
JD has also worked with Moutai’s sub-brand Wangmao, which targets a younger consumer base, and became the exclusive sales channel for Wangmao products. Going forward, JD.com will fully leverage its technology, logistics, big data, and supply chain capabilities to work with Moutai on deeper cooperation in omnichannel projects, finance, and logistics to spur their quality growth.
