Other supplies and 200,000 RMB worth of masks in an hour

JD Data: Prosperous Consumer Trends in Lower-tier Markets

Posted on Mar 10, 2021Nov 10, 2021 by Ella Kidron

by Ella Kidron

JD Big Data Research Institute and Chinese data services enterprise Tianyancha partnered to release a report on lower-tier markets trends on Mar. 9, 2021. The report comes just as rural revitalization is front and center in China’s annual Two Sessions meeting.

Here are a few highlights:

Looking at stats from just after the Chinese New Year holiday, only 47% of people who took trains from tier 1-2 cities to 3-6 tier cities bought return tickets after the festival period. The figure reached 82% for people who bought air tickets. Among the reasons for this trend are that people staggered their visits or prolonged time spent at home before returning. Another possibility, however, is that they are planning to stay and work in their hometowns.

This is indicated by a piece of data: One week before the Spring Festival, among local orders placed by consumers under age 45 in lower-tier markets, shopping frequency was 1.5 times higher after the Spring Festival than the two weeks before it. The main categories for high frequency purchases included work and production related items, home furnishing and decoration, auto and more.

Another indication of the fact that conditions in people’s hometowns in lower-tier markets is improving is the reduction in the number of migrant children enrolled in tier 1 and 2 cities, despite the fact that enrollment of primary school-age students across the country has continued to rise since 2016. This is further verified by consumption data from JD regarding children’s books.

A comparison of children’s books and auxiliary teaching materials consumption across the country, in particular the annual order data from February 2016-2021, indicates that the growth rate of remote orders (where the sender and recipient city are different) in lower-tier cities have seen a downward trend, only increasing sharply in 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

On the other hand, the growth rate of local orders in this category in mid-to-lower tier markets has increased maintained a high growth rate, and the demand for these products in lower-tier markets has been at its highest in the last five years. This is an indication that in recent years more migrant workers have moved their children’s future education plans from the big cities to their hometowns, possibly also reflecting an overall improvement in the employment opportunities available closer to home.

(ella@jd.com)

Decathlon Launches Flagship Store on JD

Posted on Mar 10, 2021Sep 29, 2021 by Hui Zhang

by Hui Zhang

Decathlon, the world’s largest sporting goods retailer, opened a flagship store on JD on Mar. 6, offering more than 80 kinds of sports-related products covering a wide range of activities from hiking and climbing, swimming and running, to skiing and surfing, road cycling, equestrian and more.

Due to the impact of the pandemic, Decathlon decided to expand its sales channels by working with JD.com to reach more Chinese consumers. JD’s strong customer base and big data analysis will assist Decathlon precisely target its potential consumers. At the same time, JD’s nationwide logistics network will greatly improve Decathlon’s distribution efficiency.

“Based on Decathlon’s diversity of sports products and its complete supply chain advantages, both sides will enhance cooperation in bringing a unique sports shopping experience for JD’s consumers,” said a representative from JD’s sports business unit.

Decathlon, a French retailer, has over 1,647 stores in 59 countries and regions. It officially entered China in 2003, opening its first offline store in Asia.

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

JD: Supporting Rural Revitalization will be a Long-Term Project

Posted on Mar 10, 2021Oct 5, 2021 by Rachel Liu

by Rachel Liu

JD Fresh will continue to support farmers and the agricultural industry in the long term, helping over 1 million farmers achieve an income increase of over 50% in three years.

JD Fresh has been supporting China’s agricultural industry belts and rural areas to develop iconic local agricultural products and leverage its platform to sell products to customers all over the country. As of October 2020, JD has sold 1.3 million kinds of agricultural products for a total of 300 million items, and increased the income of 1 million farmers.

JD Fresh now has over 1,000 “Local Specialties Pavilion” stores selling over 600,000 agricultural products. JD’s cold chain for fresh food covers nearly 300 cities. It has jointly developed popular agricultural products such as “running chicken”, “swimming duck,” “flying pigeon,” “running mountain pig” and more with rural governments and industry belts. Wuyi of Hebei province, where JD’s “running chicken” project was first developed, was awarded for its contribution to poverty alleviation in February of this year.

The “running mountain pigs” that grow in Yuquan Mountain, Heilongjiang province achieved the fastest growth of sales in the pork category on JD. JD built a playground specially to allow the pigs to have enough exercise, and in this way, the pork is of less fat and widely welcomed by high-end customers. Besides pork, JD also helped local farmers develop other pork-based products, such as dumpling fillings and sausage, which received 98% positive reviews on JD.

Going forward, as a company that focuses on supply chain and technology, JD wants to upgrade its previous model to support rural areas, and will build a mechanism for local farmers to achieve continuous income growth.

(liuchang61@jd.com)

JD’s Asia No.1 Boosts Economic Development of Rural Area

Posted on Mar 10, 2021Nov 12, 2021 by Yuchuan Wang

by Yuchuan Wang

Located in the southeast of Shenyang, Maizitun (literally means Village of Wheat) is a fast-growing logistics hub. Thousands of fully-loaded trucks drive in and out of this village every day. It’s hard to imagine that 10 years ago, Maizitun was a small village relying heavily on farming.

After JD.com launched one of its “Asia No.1” logistics parks in 2010, a project aiming to build the largest scale and most advanced network of e-commerce logistics centers in Asia, more and more logistics companies have established their businesses in Maizitun. The area has become the logistics hub for the southern Shenyang area.

Rongjun Chen, a local villager working as a picker at this warehouse has observed the transformation since he joined the company in 2015. “JD has changed many people’s lives here, allowing farmers to transform into blue, and even white collar workers.”

Born in 1993, Chen oversees more than 60 picking AGVs (automated ground vehicles) at JD for a warehousing area of 5,000 square meters, stocking nearly 10,000 different kinds of beauty products. The AGVs can recognize QR codes on the floor for route planning, which enables pickers to pick about 250 orders per hour each – three times the efficiency of a traditional picking approach.

“I used to walk miles a day to pick goods from the shelves,” said Chen. “With AGVs, I just need to be with the work station. And I’m no longer the champion in among my WeChat group friends feeding for stepping.”

In addition to operating the robots, Chen is learning how to maintain and fix them. “Technology is developing day by day. I need to learn in advance so that I can keep up with the pace of change.”

Like Chen, hundreds of Maizitun villagers are working in this park, from forklift operators to truck drivers and from sorters to couriers. Several real estate companies are building commercial and residential compounds in the village, and more and more local people’s lives have been changed by enterprises launched here one after another.

JD is operating 28 Asia No.1 logistics parks in China. The project provided numerous jobs, linking rural areas with fast delivery of global products and boosting the economy in vast rural areas.

“When you can find a stable job and stay with your family instead of going far away, you feel happy,” said Chen. Among JD’s frontline employees, over 200,000 are from rural areas, and 80,000 staff are able to work in their hometowns.

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

Top AI Scholar Heads JD Explore Academy

Posted on Mar 10, 2021Oct 11, 2022 by Kelly Dawson

by Kelly Dawson

Renowned AI scholar Dacheng Tao has been appointed the director of JD Explore Academy, where he will lead the team to explore innovative artificial intelligence applications that might drive JD.com’s business in the future.

“JD is very ambitious in developing advanced technologies for transforming the digital industry,” Tao said. “I’m excited to join the team, and hope to carry out its mission to explore new fundamental technologies.”

As an internationally recognized scholar in the field of AI and information sciences with a focus on machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and image processing among other topics, Tao is well positioned to tackle the challenge. He has published more than 500 papers in top international conferences and journals, winning “best conference paper” and “test of time” awards multiple times. Moreover, his papers have been cited nearly 60,000 times as a demonstration of how essential his research is to the field of AI.

This year he was selected as an American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellow, a distinction given to those who “help revolutionize medicine and related fields to enhance and extend the lives of people all over the world,” according to the organization. In 2019 Tao was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), comprising an elite group that have made significant contributions in the field. He was also listed in the Australian Lifetime Achievers Leaderboard in Engineering and Computer Science last year.

In 2018, he received one of the highest technical achievements in the field of data science, the IEEE ICDM Research Contribution Award, on top of having won the Australian Eureka Award twice, in both 2015 and 2020. In 2015 he also won the Vice Chancellor’s Medal of the University of Technology Sydney. He is also a foreign member of the Academia Europaea, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of New South Wales, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.

Recently he won the IEEE 2021 Computer Society Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, which honors people who have made outstanding innovative contributions in the field of computer information science and engineering over the past decade. Tao, who won “for exceptional contributions to representation learning and its applications,” is the only Chinese scientist to have won the award in 2021.

JD Explore Academy was established earlier this year, and will focus on six major digital and intelligent technology sectors, including AI, data science, decentralized computing, quantum computing, engineering and management, and ethics and science. The academy will attempt to realize disruptive technologies from the basic theoretical level in order to better serve the development of the real economy, and will recruit top talent from all over the world in order to achieve this goal. Tao joins JD Explore Academy as part of that effort.

(kellydawson@jd.com)

JD Couriers Bring Parcels to Remote Village in Chongqing

Posted on Mar 10, 2021Sep 22, 2022 by Hui Zhang

by Hui Zhang

“I really did not expect that we can receive parcels at home, and the delivery speed is impressive,” said Hong Zhou, a villager living in Xiazhuang village of Wushan county, which is 437 kilometers away from central Chongqing. Previously, delivery parcels would only be sent to a service station at the local township, and villagers would have to travel two hours’ roundtrip to retrieve their parcels.

Hong Zhou Received Parcel from JD Courier

She received a set of skincare products two days after placing the order on JD. She would never imagine being able to receive the parcels directly from the hands of a courier as the village she lived is isolated by cliffs. The delivery to Zhou, which took the courier three hours from the distribution station, made JD Logistics the first among other delivery companies to realize last mile delivery to customers in Xiazhuang village on Mar. 8. Xiazhuang is among several remote villages in which JD is now doing last mile delivery as of the end of February.

JD Courier Delivering Parcel

Xiahzuang village is not a single case. JD Logistics (JDL) is proactively penetrating China’s rural market with its business and infrastructure development, connecting rural areas with e-commerce and logistics services. The company has built out logistics infrastructure for lower-tier townships and villages, invested in intelligent equipment, and built out service stations in more than 700 remote villages and townships across China to improve logistics efficiency and drive employment in local areas.

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

Wang Feng’s Livestream On JD Attracts 1.1m Views

Posted on Mar 8, 2021Nov 22, 2022 by Martin Li

by Martin Li

Chinese rockstar Wang Feng’s latest livestream on JD drew nearly 1.1 million views.

The livestream on Mar. 3 lasted over four hours and achieved record sales among the livestreams launched by JD Worldwide, the inbound e-commerce platform of JD.

Wang, a popular singer and husband of Zhang Ziyi, a movie star in China, introduced 36 popular products, covering cosmetics, health products, electronics and fashion. Among the brands were Shiseido, Estée Lauder, Sony, Nintendo, Swisse and more.

Brands provided subsidies and gifts to consumers joining the livestream.

“E-commerce livestream works not only as a sales channel, but also an efficient marketing tool for brands. Furthermore, Customers can access professional tips on choosing quality products they really need,” said Frank Yu, general manager of marketing and operations at JD Worldwide

Wang made his livestream debut on JD in July last year, attracting over 9.15 million views and generating over RMB 200 million yuan (US$ 28.6 million) in sales.

Wang was involved in selection of each product and related marketing. He also had strong knowledge of the products he sold, their functions, specifications, and brand histories.

JD has been seeking to find a sustainable model that provides the best products to consumers and creates an entertaining shopping experience, while satisfying the needs of partner brands and livestreamers.

(bjlihao3@jd.com)

Bowen Zhou: JD Zeros in on Next-Generation Infrastructure for Supply Chain

Posted on Mar 8, 2021Aug 16, 2021 by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

In response to an interview on JD Technology’s official WeChat account regarding the integration of digital and real economies highlighted in China’s government work report, Bowen Zhou, Chairman of JD Technology Committee and president of JD AI Research Institute said that “in the next decade, JD is committed to creating next-generation supply chain infrastructure which is digitalized, intelligent and open to all.”

“[These infrastructures aim] to enable all kinds of enterprises to be connected and to support them to optimize the processes of production, circulation, services and more, eventually improving the cost-effectiveness for the real economy and the whole society,” he added.

Bowen Zhou spoke at the World Economic Forum 2020

The Government Work Report, delivered by Premier Li Keqiang on Mar. 5 at China’s National People’s Congress, pointed out that China will continue to vigorously promote innovation in science and technology and accelerate industrial transformation and upgrading. And relying on innovation and its integration into real economies, the country aims to cultivate greater economic growth momentum.

“JD’s explorations in the five key next-generation technologies: AI, IoT, blockchain, automated systems and cloud,. We have seen deep integrations into enterprises in all kinds of industries, boosting their innovation and quality growth,” Zhou said.

On supporting China’s science and technology strategies, Zhou mentioned that JD has been chosen to build an AI-powered innovative and open platform for an intelligent supply chain as part of a government-led plan.

In Zhou’s perspective, trust remains at the core of high-speed technological development and innovation. He hosted a discussion on the topic of “Trustworthy AI” during the World Economic Forum in 2020 in Davos to underline the core value and role of AI and other technologies at large for the real economy, society and the world.

JD’s Technology Committee is steering the technological capacities and assets across the conglomerate’s businesses, including retail, logistics, technology, healthcare and more, which have been deployed in real-world scenarios such as intelligent omnichannel retail, internet-based medical services, smart logistics, AI-driven fintech and AI and big data-powered intelligent cities.

(vivian.yang@jd.com)