Jul 13, 2020| JD Retail

Starbucks Opens at JD Headquarters

Ling Cao

by Ling Cao

On July 10^th, Starbucks held a soft-opening of its new store at JD headquarters in Beijing.

This store covers an area of 90 square meters, and offers a comprehensive range of categories, including coffee, beverages, pastries and dessert, as well as coffee beans and mugs.

This is the latest in a series of popular stores opening at JD’s HQ in an effort to continuously enhance staff benefits and the working environment. Employees can enjoy a 15% discount on coffee and beverages.

MUJI‘s new form, MUJIcom, KFC and popular milk tea brand HEYTEA have all recently opened at JD.

(ling.cao@jd.com)

Jan 29, 2023| JD Retail

Chinese Spring Festival 2023 Consumption Trends: “3R” Food, Routine Shopping and More

Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

Among the most prominent consumption trends during this Chinese new year holiday period (from January 21-27) were the continued booming of “3R” food, diversified and routine e-shopping categories, and the vast potential in the lower-tier markets, according to a report prepared by JD.com’s Consumption and Industry Development Research Institute.

“3R” food (short for “ready-to-cook”, “ready-to-heat” and “ready-to-eat” food) saw six-fold growth in transaction volume year over year during this period.

Food is an essential element of Chinese Spring Festival celebrations. With the 3R industry thriving in China in recent years, more and more Chinese families are choosing to order 3R dishes to enrich their reunion meals, especially meaningful holiday dishes such as chicken soup with fish maw; those with complex preparations such as Sichuan-style fish filets with pickled vegetables; and those that require special cooking skills, such as the delicacy known as “Buddha jumps over the wall,” which requires hours to simmer a variety of seafood, meat, and other nutritious ingredients.

The report also noted that with the normalization of non-stop delivery service during the festival, Chinese consumers are accustomed to ordering all kinds of “routine” products during the festival period. The transaction volume of mobile phones, home appliances, and health products on JD.com all witnessed substantial increases. (This year marks the 11^th year in a row that JD Logistics has offered non-stop delivery service during Chinese New Year.)

Meanwhile, after-sales services have been in hot demand during the holiday, such as mobile phone warranty service (up by 296 percent YoY), home appliance repairs (83 percent) and home cleaning (302 percent).

Consumers’ shopping preferences vary in different tiers of cities. The report found that during the spring festival period, consumers living in higher-tier markets shopped for a lot of fresh food, flowers and pet supplies on JD.com, while those from lower-tier markets bought more mobile phones, home appliances, furnishing and decoration products. This is reflective of the trickle-down effect by which young people returning to their homes from big cities during the holiday are spreading their online shopping habits to their relatives and friends in villages and towns, and enabling more people to enjoy the convenience and quality goods that e-commerce offers, according to the report.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

Jan 19, 2023| JD Retail

Ambassadors Experience Chinese New Year Shopping and Meal at JD.com

Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

During JD.com’s Chinese New Year (CNY) Grand Promotion in the past two weeks, ambassadors and diplomats to China from 15 countries including Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, Uruguay and others sent their best wishes through videos and livestreaming to consumers at JD.com, while they enthusiastically recommended their countries’ specialties as Chinese people engage in the Spring Festival shopping.

It is a tradition for Chinese people to make special purchases – food in particular, ahead of the Spring Festival(CNY’s Day) with the highlight of a multi-course family dinner on the eve of the new year, which will fall on January 22 this year， ushering in the Chinese lunar new year of the rabbit.

A Chinese meal with imported food and wine

Ambassadors from Thailand, Moldova and Denmark visited SEVEN FRESH, the omni-channel grocery store under JD.com to personally experience the festival preparation atmosphere with local Beijing residents, and enjoyed a special Chinese-style banquet, on January 10, 2023.

Designed by William Wu, the star chef of SEVEN FRESH, the menu manifested the fusion of Chinese tastes with a variety of imported ingredients from countries the ambassadors represent, including black tiger prawns and rice from Thailand, pork from Denmark and wines from Moldova.

Moldovan ambassador to China H.E. Dumitru Braghis was delighted to invite all guests to appreciate the color and flavor of the wines and explained Moldova’s well-established wine industry and long history that offers classic quality wines for Chinese consumers’ choices.

“It’s simply astonishing what you can buy online here in China,” marveled H.E. Dorthe Lange, ambassador-rank Deputy Head of Mission of Embassy of the Kingdom of Denmark at the variety of products from all over the world that are available for Chinese customers. Besides the famous Danish butter cookies, Ms. Lange also recommended Danish seafood, pork products and beers as good choices for new year grocery shopping.

Thai ambassador H.E. Atthayut Srisamoot and his wife Mrs.Kamoltip Srisamoot showed more familiarity with Chinese cuisine and the trend of ready-to-eat food. They recommended all kinds of Thai curries, Tom Yum Kung and other prepared cooking products with which customers can easily make delicious Thai dishes at home.

National pavilions and imported live lobsters

With the development of international cold-chain logistics, JD.com has been enhancing efforts in importing more fresh products globally to meet the increasing demand from Chinese consumers. During this year’s CNY sales, the transaction volume of frozen products directly procured by JD Fresh saw strong growth compared with the sales data from last year’s shopping festival, such as black tiger prawns from Thailand (up by 2 times), beef from Argentina (up by4 times), shrimps from Greenland of Denmark(up by 6 times), whereas the transaction volume of live lobsters jumped over 10 times compared with last month. These lobsters are harvested ashore from Canada and delivered to Chinese consumers in as soon as 17 hours through JD’s e-commerce platform, fresh and at a good price.

To facilitate more high-quality products to access the Chinese market, JD.com introduced the National Pavilions project which is supported by embassies, trade associations, and other official institutions, to serve as a window for products of each country to be more identifiable all in one portal and help merchants to test the water of the Chinese market. As of now, nearly 100 national pavilions are set up on JD.com, greatly enriching Chinese consumers’ shopping choices for the new year as strong sales are seen on Italian olive oil, Cyprus’ blue wine, South American mate drink and many more products.

This year marks the 11^th year in a row that JD Logistics commits to non-stop delivery service during the CNY holidays, as part of the company’s commitment to satisfy consumers whenever and wherever they need.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)