JD.com Overseas Consumption Report: Chinese-featured Products Very Popular Among Cross-border Consumers

Posted on by Xiaoqian Han

by Xiaoqian Han

JD.com Overseas, JD.com’s cross-border e-commerce platform, launched the 2022 Consumption Trends in Overseas Report on July 19th, revealing the purchasing preferences of cross-border customers based on consumption data.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the report:

  • The cross-border sector is experiencing a boom
  • JD.com Overseas’ consumers aged 28-45 are the main group of buyers
  • JD.com Overseas’ consumers are keen on Chinese-themed products

The cross-border e-commerce market continues to grow

According to the report, the current overseas market has three characteristics: Mature e-commerce marketing, strong consumer shopping demand, and openness to international sellers. The data shows that the mature eCommerce market in foreign countries such as the U.S. still has strong cross-border sales and the demand for online shopping.

“The report shows the needs of global consumers and in-depth analysis based on the different geographical scenarios, helping us better understand global consumption and more specific consumer needs,” said Vicky Tang, head of JD.com Overseas.

Aged 28-45 are the main group

According to the study, JD.com’s international cross-border online shoppers can be divided into three groups: First, consumers who work and reside in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and overseas; second, relatively young students who study abroad; and third, local residents of Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and overseas.

From the perspective of user portraits on the JD.com Overseas platform, 28-45-year-old working and resident users are the main consumer groups, and most of them live in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas. The report also shows that 90.9 percent of consumers will search online shopping and product discount-related information on JD.com Overseas.

Chinese-featured products

The report indicated that users are influenced deeply by their online shopping habits when they live in China. Electronic and digital products such as computer/offices and mobile phones are still popular categories among overseas consumers.

In addition, maternal and child products and books are important categories on the platform. In particular, the overseas prices of books are much higher than those in China, so users will choose cross-border online shopping platforms like JD.com Overseas to buy books.

Moreover, during traditional festivals every year, Chinese lanterns, jewelry, cheongsams, and cultural gifts are also favored by overseas Chinese. And the report also shows that specialty Chinese snacks such as spicy strips made of flour, spicy duck tongue, and snail rice noodles are very popular among Hong Kong consumers.

 

hanxiaoqian3@jd.com

Lululemon Officially Launches on JD.com

Posted on by Doris Liu

by Doris Liu

Canadian retailer Lululemon, originally well-known for its iconic yoga line, officially debuted its digital flagship store on July 18 in the J Shop, JD’s upgrade of its Fashion and Lifestyle business, introducing athletic apparel for not only yoga, but also running, training, and casual wear, among others.

Founded in 1998 with headquarters in Vancouver, Lululemon’s products are developed to make living the “sweat life” comfortable. By turning fitness customers into a “community hub”, the brand is sharing the values of wellness and healthy lifestyles, while also encouraging the setting of life goals.

With the continuous improvement of quality of life in China, sports enthusiasts are growing considerably, as well as their demand for sports equipment consumption. The popularity of Lululemon indicates that the Chinese market not only acknowledges the product quality, but also recognizes the emotional connection it creates between the community and the brand.

Many of Lululemon’s designs are made with exclusive materials and fabrics. Dedicated to continuous research and development based on collaboration with yogis and athletes around the world, Lululemon receives the market feedback in a timely manner, which benefits the new product launch together with its expansion of scenarios.

As “Qi Xi” Festival(on Chinese lunar calendar July 7), often dubbed Chinese Valentine’s Day, falls on August 4 this year, Lululemon also displayed clothes on which is printed the word “love” to enable customers to “express [their] love” on the special day.

The J Shop, with deep integration of JD’s commodity and service capabilities in omni-channel retailing, will continue to help more brands expand their horizons in China and innovate through practice to better accommodate consumers’ needs in the consumption and experience of apparel, lifestyle, cosmetics, sports, luxury fashion, watches and more.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)

Former Chinese Ambassadors Visit JD Headquarters

Posted on by Mengyang He

by Mengyang He

JD.com welcomed the former Chinese ambassadors to Ecuador, Cuba, and Argentina H.E. Yicong Xu, to Angola H.E. Bolun Zhang, and Timor-Leste H.E. Yuancong Fu at JD’s headquarters in Beijing on July 15.

During the guided tour, the three senior diplomats highly praised JD for its diversified engagement, outstanding customer service, and supply chain capabilities.

The meeting with the delegation at JD’s headquarters

“JD.com put forward a great initiative ahead of the Chinese New Year, by working with the Argentine Embassy to China and inviting the ambassador H.E. Gustavo Sabino Vaca Narvaja to my home. I was also delighted to see JD.com has been promoting the bilateral trade relations between China and Argentina,” noted Ambassador Xu. “The visit at JD’s headquarters today opened my mind to the variety of JD’s businesses, ranging from retail, logistics, technology, health, etc.”

The former Chinese ambassadors to Angola H.E. Bolun Zhang (left), to Ecuador, Cuba, and Argentina H.E. Yicong Xu (center), and to Timor-Leste H.E. Yuancong Fu (right)

Ambassador Zhang said, “it is eye-opening to learn about JD’s international engagement led by JD Worldwide, such as in the Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America.”

“JD.com is nowadays highly connected with people’s livelihood, from an online shopping platform to a telemedicine service provider,” said Ambassador Fu. “As I shop regularly on JD.com, I experience outstanding customer experience and I have also become friends with the JD courier in my neighborhood.” Ambassador Fu is from Suqian, Jiangsu province, the hometown of Richard Liu, founder and Chairman of JD.com. Customers may enjoy special rate offered by JD.com if they want to deliver packages to Suqian, the ambassador happily mentioned his experiences.

 

(hemengyang5@jd.com)

LVMH Group’s Fendi Joins JD.com

Posted on by Doris Liu

by Doris Liu

Italian luxury brand Fendi kicked off its official flagship store on JD.com on July 15, the ninth high-end fashion brand under the LVMH Group to partner with JD following Louis Vuitton, Dior, Bvlgari, Celine, Loewe, Givenchy, Berluti and Rimowa since April of 2021.

In China, “Double Seven” (lunar calendar July 7, which falls on August 4 this year) is also known as Chinese Valentine’s Day. To observe this occasion, Fendi launched new capsule in line with the sweet feeling, including bags, sneakers, cardigans, earrings, ready-to-wear and accessories. These products are suitable for gifting and are shoppable in the official Fendi flagship store of JD’s app.

To cater to the premium lifestyle needs of JD’s consumers, the store features a page with selected products from the fashion house, offering the most popular items to inspire outfit ideas and everyday fashion.

The pandemic has accelerated China’s digitalization, with the growth rate of online and offline personal luxury goods sales in China forecasted to be 56 and 30 percent respectively, according to the China Luxury Report 2021 released by Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm.

JD Luxury has collaborated with over 300 luxury and premium brands so far, and is facilitating brands with their digitalization progress, while also moving forward with refreshing marketing campaigns, and offering a refined, personalized shopping experience to deliver the desired results for both brands and customers.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)

JD Cloud Unveils 16 Tech Products During JD Discovery Tech Summit

Posted on by Mengyang He

by Mengyang He

JD Cloud launched 16 tech products during JD.com’s annual tech summit JD Discovery (JDD) held on July 13, where it also showcased JD Cloud’s best practices applied across multiple industries, such as in retail, energy, urban, finance, industrial manufacturing, and more.

With an aim to reinforce the technological capabilities for digitally intelligent supply chain, JD Cloud unveiled its breakthroughs by launching engine, storage platform, and data center-related products, etc., which all fell under the concept of “cost, efficiency, and experience.”

The launch of Jing Gang 2.0

As the industry-leading software and hardware integrated virtual engine, the newly launched product Jing Gang 2.0 can accelerate by unloading virtualization to dedicated hardware, reduce virtualization loss to zero and greatly improve network and storage performance. Its storage IOPS and network forwarding performance can both be improved by 50 percent.

Yunhai, a unified storage platform independently developed based on the separation technology of storage and computing, breaks the limitation of integration of storage and computing, and reduces the cost of computing resources by 30 percent. The software and hardware integration of Jing Gang 2.0 and Yunhai enables the storage performance to improve by 10 times, and it has been fully applied to JD.com’s large-scale complex business scenarios.

Additionally, JD Cloud has been investing heavily in the research and development of data center-related technologies. During the summit, JD Cloud also launched the liquid cooling server, liquid cooling cabinet, and container data center. For example, it takes 3 to 5 days for the on-site installation of the container data center, and the data center’s total costs are reduced by 30 percent.

Liqiang Gao, president of JD Cloud

As of now, JD Cloud has been serving over 80 cities, 1800 large enterprises, and 1.95 million SMEs. “The next step of industrial digitalization is digitally intelligent supply chain. The most efficient way to push forward industrial digitalization is to adopt the mindset of supply chain management,” noted Liqiang Gao, president of JD Cloud.

 

(hemengyang5@jd.com)

Dr. Tao: JD.com to Build Capacities for Industrial Metaverse Focusing on Supply Chain

Posted on by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

“JD’s Metaverse will be centered on supply chain content to promote new business models, formats and industries that integrate the digital and the real worlds,” noted Dr. Dacheng Tao, a foreign member of the European Academy of Science, director of the JD Explore Academy and a senior vice president of JD.com, at the JD Discovery Global Conference 2022 held on July 13th in Beijing.

The Academy is among the first in China to propose the industrial Metaverse since April 2021. “The industrial Metaverse is not only a kind of technology or product,” Tao pointed out. “It will foster technological breakthroughs and product innovations in the future that will transform many industrial structures.”

Dr. Dacheng Tao, Director of JD Explore Academy 

The White Book on China’s Digital Economy Development shows that the size of China’s digital economy increased 15 times in the past 16 years, surpassing RMB 39 trillion yuan by the end of 2021. The integration of digital and physical economies is an inevitable trend and the rise of the industrial Metaverse brings a new way of thinking in the process.

According to Tao, JD will focus on three areas of capability building in the early stages of industrial Metaverse development, namely Digital Twin, which enables digital representation of the physical world entity or system; Digital Thread, which integrates AI technologies in the virtual world to better solve problems in the real world; and Born Digital, in which deep learning, AI-generated content and more technologies are applied to achieve seamless integration between the two worlds, and will eventually propel hardware upgrading such as more flexible manufacturing units and robotic modules.

These three capabilities are adopted by industries in China at different phases based on their stages of development. For instance, a steel plant may still be in the Digital Twin stage, while a car factory is close to Born Digital.

Tao said that the Academy has used its digital twin system to simulate JD’s supply chain and helped increase its decision-making efficiency by over 95 percent. In the future, more capabilities will be applied to improve the operation of manufacturing, logistics and retail process in the realm of supply chain.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

JDT Rolls Out Plans to Better Benefit Partners

Posted on by Doris Liu

by Doris Liu

“We will always hold an open and win-win attitude with the pursuit of long-term value, and work with each partner to ‘co-exist in the real economy and restart growth,’” said Peinuan Wang, Vice President of JD.com, at the first JD Technology (JDT) Partner Conference on July 12 in Beijing.

Traditional industries are confronted with issues of digital transformation and upgrading, which are key to the development of the real economy. To keep this in mind, JDT opens up the technical capabilities with 200 solutions to 12 vertical industries of retail, logistics, Internet, health, and agriculture, among others, satisfying the business partners’ different digital needs.

In order to be complementary in value for partners, the most crucial supply chain capabilities and ecosystem will be open, including a digitally intelligent supply chain open platform, open PaaS ecosystem Yun Zhu (云筑, meaning Cloud Building) plan 2.0 and four scenario platforms: industrial Internet platform, collaborative office platform, urban industrial service platform, and consumption promotion platform.

JDT shares the same philosophy on hybrid cloud and AI strategy with IBM, said Xuemei Pan, Technical General Manager of the technology department, IBM China. JD Cloud’s cloud platforms and technical R&D strength, combined with IBM’s overseas public cloud, enterprise storage services, intelligent operation and maintenance, iPaaS, SaaS, as well as IBM’s practices in serving global enterprises, will become a firm support to the digital transformation of Chinese enterprises, Pan added.

To further assist the development of business partners, the JDT PLUS Partner Select Program was released at the conference to provide an array of benefits to the member partners which are closely working with JDT.

JDT has established a unified ecosystem to divide partners into categories of market development, products and solutions, service delivery and distribution channels. Based on the partners’ business capability, scale and future cooperation mode and field, JDT will put them into different groups and provide corresponding rights and interests.

Here are some highlights of the JDT PLUS Partner Select Program:

1. JDT PLUS partners are given priority to participate in major business opportunities and projects, and can receive special support from JDT in products, solutions, sales and marketing, as well as the priority to join in JD’s essential marketing activities including co-branding.

2. JDT PLUS partners can enjoy all-round access and openness of JD’s resources and capabilities. JDT will open the most core supply chain capabilities, and connect partners with business resources such as JD Mall, JD Logistics and JD Health according to their needs.

3. JDT will prioritize JDT PLUS partners to jointly create products and develop niche markets.

Furthermore, a “10-billion Revenue Plan” was also announced on July 12, aiming to help partners earn more than RMB 10 billion yuan within two years through JDT’s sharing of technical capacities and business opportunities, with joint development of products and solutions, capital investment and so on.

After around 5 years of in-depth cooperation in urban digital economy, JDT’s business has been implemented in practice in over 80 cities with operation of over 70 industrial parks gathering some 5,000 companies.

To expand the market, JDT launched a “Doubling 100 Cities Initiative”, planning to bring in partners based on the existing in-depth cooperation with 100 cities, and together extend business in another 100 cities in the following three years.

The size of the digital economy is expected to exceed 60 trillion yuan by 2025, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). In the digital growth space, business partners of JDT will be more focused on scenario innovation, effects and benefits of integration of technology and the real economy. Thus, with the long-term focus in JD’s DNA, JDT will step forward hand in hand with partners to boost professions and industries with digital intelligence and achieve sustainable value creation.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)

Maison Margiela Unveils Flagship Store on JD.com

Posted on by Doris Liu

by Doris Liu

French fashion house Maison Margiela, part of Italian fashion group OTB, launched a flagship store on JD.com on July 14, following the inauguration of the brand’s largest physical flagship store globally at JC Plaza in Shanghai last week.

The opening of Maison Margiela’s online and offline flagship stores not only offers a wide range of popular items including bags, ready-to-wear and footwear, among others, but also provides more shopping experiences.

Furthermore, the “buy online, pick up in store” model also enhances Maison Margiela’s omni-channel retail model. Customers can opt to place an order in JD’s flagship store online and pick it up at its store at Shanghai’s JC Plaza, providing both the convenience of online selection as well as in-location experiences.

Among the items available for JD’s customers are the Glam Slam bag with its iconic cloud shape, Tabi shoes inspired by the traditional Japanese split-toe sock and the latest autumn/winter collection of Maison Margiela. In addition, the brand debuted its first art collection of paper-made Replica sneakers in a limited edition of 150 pairs exclusively on JD.com, turning recycled cardboard into an artwork that conveys the concept of sustainability.

JD’s 3D shopping solution supported by VR technology is also expected to be rolled out soon, which will enable customers to virtually explore the newly-launched Shanghai flagship store with an immersive experience and make purchase decisions in the virtual store.

With more than 300 luxury brands running their official flagship stores on JD.com, JD’s luxury business is gaining recognition from brands and customers. The collaboration with Maison Margiela opens up a new space for omni-channel retail, and JD is always devoted to evolving the matrix of brands and improving the quality of services.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)