by Yuchuan Wang

JD.com announced this week that two papers on automatic and intelligent content generation for e-commerce product recommendation submitted by JD Retail were accepted by the 36th Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2022 (AAAI 2022) under the track of “Highly Innovative Applications of AI.” To be held in February in Vancouver, Canada, AAAI is one of the world’s most prestigious conferences in the field of AI. JD is the only company to enter two papers among the total of eight under this track for AAAI 2022.

Jointly researched by JD Retail and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, the two papers elaborate on innovative projects applied at JD to advance the automated recommendation and selling process, through Natural Language Processing (NLP), largely improving operations efficiency and saving labor costs.

JD’s paper “Intelligent Online Selling Point Extraction for E-Commerce Recommendation” introduces an intelligent online selling point extraction system (IOSPE), which uses NLP and in-depth generation technology to automatically generate selling points for recommended products. As of September 2021, IOSPE has become the core service used by JD.com for more than 60 key categories of products, covering more than one million products. So far, the system has generated hundreds of millions of selling points for products, helping merchants greatly improve the efficiency of promotion and reduce costs. IOSPE effectively increases the click-through rate (CTR) of products and the average stay time of customers on the product page, which is of great benefit to increasing the conversion rate of e-commerce.

The paper “Automatic Product Copywriting for E-Commerce” explains how JD’s automated product introduction copywriting generation system (APCG) works based on natural language generation (NLG) and model pretraining technologies. Since the application of the system on JD in February 2021, APCG gradually covered all product categories selling on JD, and also for merchants’ new products. By September 2021, it has generated 2.53 million pieces of product descriptions, and improved the overall average click-through rate (CTR), the conversion rate (CVR) and the accumulated gross merchandise volume(GMV) by 4.22%, 3.61% and 213.42% respectively, on a year-on-year basis. The system generates up to 209,000 pieces of descriptions of products weekly, equivalent to the workload of about 1,000 professional copywriters.

Thanks to more and more application of innovative technologies such as NLP and image processing in e-commerce search and recommendation scenarios, customers worldwide are enjoying a more and more convenient shopping experience online.

Founded in 1979, the AAAI is an international nonprofit scientific society devoted to promoting research in, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence. Last year, AAAI 2021 saw over 9,000 paper submissions, of which 1,692 were accepted.

 

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

by Siyi Zhao and Mengyang He

JD has completed this year’s Singles Day Grand Promotion with a total transaction volume of RMB 349.1 billion yuan during the 11-day sale that started from 8 pm on Oct 31, setting a new record for the sales of its annual shopping festival. Behind this number are several distinct consumption trends.

 

New and high-quality products

During this year’s grand promotion, JD has witnessed the consumption trends of products that are new and of high-quality, along with attributes catering to consumers’ various demands.

JD continues to demonstrate its strong position in the home appliance category, with over 50 million households choosing JD to shop for their products. The number of all-category products sold regrading JD’s IoT smart ecosystem was twice that of the same period last year, with the number of thin and light high-performance notebooks sold increasing by 270% YOY, and 4K smart projectors achieving a YOY growth of 160%.

Under the trend of consumption upgrading, consumers also prefer high-end flagship phones, with the number of items regarding brands of Xiaomi, OPPO, Honor, and vivo sold over 4 times as much as that of the whole day (Nov 11) of last year.

As for agricultural products, consumers are more and more concerned about the place of origin. During JD’s promotion, the transaction volume of Wuchang rice, the most popular rice brand from Heilongjiang, increased by more than 5 times YOY, and those of Suqian hairy crabs increased by 600 times YOY.

In the past year, JD Apparel has ushered in more than 100 international and domestic key account (KA brands), while more than 6000 new fashion brands were among this year’s Singles Day Grand Promotion. The total product volume of JD.com apparel are of 15 times more than that of the same period last year.

 

Shop for service-products

These days, consumers are not satisfied with buying solely tangible products online—they have been also flocking to place orders for a slew of services.

The transaction volume of pet products and smart products during the promotion increased by 267% YOY, while the volume of online pet consultation services surged by 178% compared with the same period of last month.

Also, on Nov 11, the consultation volume of the maternal and child health department of JD Health Internet Hospital increased by 10 times YOY, the transaction volume of genetic testing increased by 16 times, the HPV vaccine appointment services by more than 7 times, and the dental health orders by nearly 5 times, all of which reflects the new trend of purchasing a new form of intangible product, namely service, online.

 

A global perspective

Through cooperation with international and local partners, JD has established a supply chain network covering more than 220 countries and regions. The volume of products sold globally during this year’s Singles Day Grand Promotion increased by 27 times YOY. JD Worldwide also imported a wide range of high-quality products from abroad. The transaction volume of JD Import Supermarket grew by 14 times YOY.

JD also took its Singles Day Grand Promotion to a larger group of international consumers. For example, JD.ID in Indonesia partnered with TikTok, and through livestreaming set a JD.ID sales record. In Thailand, JD Central reported a transaction volume from midnight to 2 am on Nov 11 with a YOY increase of 227%. Baby supplies and food and beverage are the top two categories that had the fastest growth among Thai consumers. Phones, PCs, and home appliances all sustained a 3-digit growth.

JD’s 2021 Singles Day Grand Promotion has continuously become a reflection on China’s consumption trend, a trend that is upward and dynamic, and demonstrates a great potential for China’s consumption force.

 

(zhaosiyi5@jd.com; hemengyang5@jd.com)