by Yuchuan Wang

JD.com today announced the launch of its “Green Impact Initiative” to promote sustainable consumption throughout the supply chain. Starting from this year’s 618 Grand Promotion, China’s largest mid-year shopping festival, approximately one million different kinds of products on JD.com will be selected to be green-labeled, helping Chinese consumers find and buy green products more easily.

The program will be officially launched on JD’s app on May 31, in collaboration with global partners including P&G, JOMOO, L’Oréal, CHERY, PurCotton, Nestlé, Panasonic, Abbott, etc., and China Association of Small and Medium Enterprise. By purchasing these labeled products, customers are able to collect green credits and redeem for green products, coupons and peripheral products including digital collectibles through a newly established green account system integrated in JD’s app.

JD Green Impact Initiative in collaboration with global partners

“JD’s products and services can be accessed by our customers almost anytime and anywhere, but this is not enough,” said Chen Lin, vice president of JD.com and head of platform business of JD Retail. “Only by making every node on the supply chain low-carbon, such as creation, marketing, circulation, and fulfillment, can we lead sustainable green consumption.”

JD.com selects and labels products based on certification, function, usage scenario and packaging materials. The labeled products will include those certified by national and international standards, advocating for refill and less packaging, adopting sustainable materials, with zero waste, as well as low-carbon transportation products including BEVs, sustainable fashion and furnishing products, and energy efficient appliances.

The delivery boxes for products under the Green Impact Initiative are reusable, and can be transformed into DIY pet houses and storage boxes.

On June 5, World Environment Day, JD will hold a grand marketing campaign to promote the initiative to its over 580 millions of customers.

JD.com launched the green supply chain program “Green Stream Initiative” in 2017. Through the initiative, over 2 billion carton boxes can be saved annually by innovating packaging materials and standards with more than 200,000 brands and merchants. The company is committed to reducing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 on the basis of 2019 emissions, and building the largest rooftop photovoltaic (PV) power generation ecosystem with partners by 2030.

 

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

JD.com will kick off 618 Grand Promotion 2022 on May 23 under the theme of “Responsible Supply Chain”, the company said today at an online press conference. The pre-sale period will last until May 31.

“Our understanding of supply chain has been evolving and pivoting on responsibilities that will not only create value for business, but also for industries and society,” said Lijun Xin, CEO of JD Retail at the press conference.

Lijun Xin, CEO of JD Retail at JD618 press conference 2022

During a time of uncertainties with COVID resurgences and supply chain disruptions in China since this year, JD.com has come forward to fully leverage its self-operated supply chain to deliver everyday goods and services to people in urgent need, and support its merchants’ operations by all means to stabilize the market at fair price. Its unique and resilient supply chain capability has been increasingly visible and trusted by its customers, merchants and the Chinese public.

The annual mid-year shopping festival will officially start at 8 p.m. on May 31, and last until June 20, offering an array of innovative service upgrades and green consumption promotions for people to have even better shopping experiences.

The “2+4” definition of a responsible supply chain

A responsible supply chain, by JD’s definition, is a combination of two capabilities, namely the infrastructure represented by its nationwide warehouse networks and other modernized logistics facilities, and the ability to efficiently integrate and synergize all the resources. These capabilities should always support four use cases for the benefit of society: navigating major social events, promoting a greener environment, boosting consumption and driving industrial progress.

From daily service to emergency relief, JD’s responsible supply chain is ready to adapt at any needed time. Take the recent COVID lockdown in Shanghai for example. In about a month’s time, JD has supplied more than 80,000 tons of essential goods to the city against all odds. In doing so, JD summoned over 4,000 frontline couriers and sorters around the country to Shanghai and rushed to build over 1,600 contactless community supply stations to carry out local services.

To date, JD is operating nearly 1,400 warehouses and 43 “Asian No.1” intelligent logistics parks across China, a highly collaborative system that ensures about 90 percent of its online orders to be delivered the same or next day, including to rural China, reaching 93 percent of counties and 84 percent of townships nationwide.

JD’s nationwide logistics network covering 14,000 warehouses and more

Customer service and omni-channel upgrade

With 185 basic services and over a hundred shopping guarantees in place, this year’s 618 Grand Promotion will create an encircling protection service for customers whenever and wherever they shop with JD. It is estimated that in the past two years, JD has invested more than RMB 40 billion yuan in improving customer service. Popular services include price protection, cross-category trade-in service, replace-rather-than-repair service, and free online vet consultations, among others.

Omni-channel continues to gain momentum, providing customers with more shopping choices and convenience. During the shopping festival, consumers in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Changsha, among other cities, can fetch coupons on JD and shop offline in millions of brick-and-mortar stores. JD’s on-demand retail service, known as “Shop Now”, has been connected with more than 150,000 offline retailers including Walmart stores, Apple authorized resellers, SEPHORA and more, offering a wide variety of products to be delivered to customers’ doorsteps within an hour and even minutes.

The J Shop, launched on May 9^th, is JD’s latest innovation of omni-channel retail in its marketplace fashion and lifestyle categories. The shop appears in JD’s App as a chic online department store offering apparel, cosmetics, sports, luxury, and other fashion products ranging from the world’s top brands, trending designs, and limited editions to C2M (Consumer to Manufacturer) models. The program’s offline selected collection stores are coming soon in several big cities ahead of June 18^th, and will integrate consumption insights from online with premium shopping experiences and services in the real world.

The J Shop debut in JD App

Greener shopping and inclusive growth

During the press conference, JD also announced the launch of the “Green Impact Initiative,” by which nearly one million sorts of eco-friendly products will be screened out and labeled green on its platform, guiding JD’s over 580 million active users to shop greener. These products range from energy-saving home appliances, sustainable fashion goods, zero waste goods, and products that support refills, less packaging or low-carbon travel such as electric cars and more. Shoppers for these products will be rewarded JD’s green credits that can be used to apply discounts to other green-labeled products.

A poster on JD’s Green Impact Initiative 

The initiative scales new heights for JD’s current sustainability efforts including its green supply chain program known as the “Green Stream Initiative” which implements low-carbon practices spanning the merchandises circulation process on the supply side from warehousing, transportation, packaging to recycling, while the Green Impact Initiative will further enable the company to unleash its potential to drive responsible consumption on the demand side.

JD’s Green Impact Initiative is co-launched with brand partners at the JD618 press conference 

Furthermore, high-quality agricultural products will have more prominent exposure at this year’s campaign in a bid to support farmers and agricultural development. It is estimated that over 200 industrial belts will participate in this year’s 618 Grand Promotion, directly and indirectly creating tens of millions of job opportunities, which is of special significance as the economy faces headwinds due to the epidemic impact.

One slogan of this year’s campaign is “Supporting people from cities and villages to have a vibrant life with our responsible supply chain,” which reflects JD’s aspiration to leverage the 618 Grand Promotion to bring better prospects for its customers, merchants, brands, SMEs, offline stores, farmers and more.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

by Doris Liu

As a steadfast promoter of green consumption, JD.com has secured a leading position of home appliances in China not only by providing a wide range of products with superior full-service capabilities, but also by helping push forward the recycling economy in the form of trade-in services and more.

According to the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s household appliances ownership has exceeded 2.1 billion items, with an estimated scrappage volume of 200 million items in 2022.

A considerable number of families are still using home appliances that were bought during 2009 to 2011, when China had implemented trade-in policies to expand consumer demand and improve energy use efficiency. It is worth noting that air conditioners with a safe service life of 10 years are just entering the replacement cycle.

By replacing new energy-efficient products in a timely manner, safety hazards can be effectively eliminated and consumers’ energy expenses can be largely reduced as well. Data from the China National Institute of Standardization shows that the energy efficiency of air conditioners can drop by 40-50 percent after 10 years of use. Taking 1-HP inverter air conditioners as an example, new energy-efficient products can save nearly 40 percent of electricity compared with the old models which were manufactured 10 years ago.

JD has introduced a variety of stimulus steps to push consumers to replace appliances that are beyond their safe service life. For example, the trade-in service has been further simplified. Rather than following the industry’s valuation mechanism that is mainly based on product model and status, JD Home Appliances launched a one-price trade-in model in 2022, which allows customers to trade in their old appliances by selecting a specific product category. Each category has a fixed price, regardless of the product’s brand or status. The service has covered more than 95 percent of cities, counties and towns nationwide, and besides the subsidies for new purchase, customers also enjoy free dismantling and free transportation of the old appliances.

Promotions of energy-saving and emission-reducing products also help. Noting that the public’s consciousness of health and environmental protection has been strengthened with the demand for quality products, JD has also initiated rounds of promotions for energy-saving and innovative products.

The “2022 Air Conditioning Industry Trends Report” jointly released by JD Home Appliances and market consultancy All View Cloud shows that the domestic air conditioning industry retail sales in 2021 were down 1.2 percent year-on-year (YOY) at RMB 152.7 billion yuan, and the retail volume was down 8.7 percent YOY at 46.89 million items.

However, amid the overall decline, online sales of fresh air ventilation and air-conditioning integrated systems in 2021 rose 492.7 percent YOY at RMB 820 million yuan, said the report. JD.com’s sales of such products increased by more than six times YOY in 2021, as it had carried out an array of promotions and awareness-raising activities.

Through in-depth insights of the market, JD also provides brands with customers’ health needs to help the manufactures enhance R&D of the fresh air ventilation and air-conditioning integrated system, pushing for upgraded products.

JD Home Appliances has offered trade-in services since 2016, with more than 30 recycling categories such as large and small home appliances. According to the company’s calculation, the air conditioners, fridges and televisions with primary energy efficiency sold through JD.com in 2021 can reduce nearly 2 million tons of carbon emissions. Honored as the “Annual Influential Enterprise in Carbon Neutral Field” by domestic websites early this year, JD will continue to operate with the concept of cutting emissions through its businesses.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)