Topic

by Rachel Liu

JDDJ (JD Daojia, a local on-demand retail platform under Dada Group) published its 2020 White Paper, “On-demand Consumption of Mobile Phones”, which is the first O2O mobile phone industry report about on-demand consumption of mobile phones. The report pointed out that JD’s Omnichannel Fulfillment program has played an important role in JDDJ’s one-hour delivery service.

Through the program, JD and JDDJ jointly built an omnichannel ecosystem. When customers shop for mobile phones on JD, they are able to make orders from JDDJ, and enjoy one-hour delivery service provided by Dada Now.

Seeing that consumers, especially young consumers are demanding quicker fulfillment times, JDDJ worked with JD and over 6,000 stores in China to build the one-hour mobile phone delivery network. “One-hour delivery will not just be a demand, but a habit. We have seen many customers want to get the newly released mobile phones as soon as possible. What’s more, mobile phones have a mature offline store system and supply chain, which means there is a lot of potential for on-demand retail.” said Guangsen Mou, general manager of JDDJ’s Fashion and Digital Electronics Business Department.

“Dada group is an important omnichannel partner of JD Retail. The on-demand delivery service that we jointly create can provide better shopping experience for customers and improve the turnover rate for retailers. We want to leverage our advantages in logistics and supply chain to reach customers directly.” said Daniel Tan, president of JD Mobile Devices.

JD also opened its traffic and marketing resources and provided access to its over 440 million customers for JDDJ to achieve an omnichannel experience and provide more options for JD customers. The omnichannel program helped both JD and JDDJ improve sales of mobile devices – according to data of JDDJ, sales of mobile phones generated from JD’s Omnichannel Fulfillment program on Dec. 12 were twice the sales on Nov. 11.

 

(liuchang61@jd.com)

by Hui Zhang

JD’s data shows the search volume of “Litang”, hometown to 20-year-old Dingzhen who has found fame online for his good looks, surged by more than 10 times, and the number of related products soared by 240% from the end of November to the end of December.

The search terms such as “the same jacket to Dingzhen” and “Litang specialties” have become hot words on JD.com and many other ecommerce platforms.

Right before the New Year of 2021. JD launched a scarf same to Ding Zhen’s on its Jingxi app, which is focused on providing high-quality products with low price. The scarf was manufactured by YARGEY Yak Velvet Products Company, which has acquired permission from Ding to use his picture wearing the same scarf. For every Ding Zhen scarf sold, RMB 5 yuan will be provided to the relevant departments in Litang for grassland environmental protection. Thanks to Dingzhen and the ecommerce advantage of Jingxi, the company are seeing an increasing number of orders which has increased income to more than 4,000 local farming households and brought jobs to nearly 100 people.

Dingzhen went viral on the internet accidently after being captured in blogger’s video online. His innocent smile has attracted many Chinese netizens. “His smile was comforting. His sudden fame proves that Chinese society love all things beautiful and positive,” said a Chinese netizen.

According to JD’s data, people around 26-45 years old have contributed to 69% sales to local products in Litang. Female consumers have bought 73.2% and males 26.8%. The most popular searching items are Litang travel tips, tea, medicine and food.

In addition to Sichuan, the home province of Dingzhen, most of the consumers buying Litang related products come from  places in the east and south including Guangdong, Fujian, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Shandong. Guangdong. Among them, Guangdong is leading with more than 16% of sales.

The accidental fame for Dingzhen also helped local small enterprises survive and bring jobs to local farmers.

 

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

by Ling Cao

Leveraging long-term cooperation with brand partners, two gaming cellphones will be launched on JD.com this week.

One is iQOO 7, which is the official cellphone for KPL (King Pro League) e-sports, and will be available on Jan. 15. The cellphone is from iQOO, a sub-brand under vivo, China’s cellphone brand. In addition to service and accessories that come with purchasing the new cellphone, JD will provide other benefits including a special trade-in policy.

Another cellphone is Huawei’s nova8 ProX, which launched on JD today (Jan. 13). This is a KPL tailored cellphone that will be sold in a special set, including a tailored cellphone case, charger and other accessories. The new cellphone can provide a 4D immersive experience for gamers, such as enabling gamers to experience a sense of vibration according to the game reaction.

JD has long explored the potential for the gaming industry. In July last year, JD cooperated with a Tencent game, Black Shark, Lenovo and hardware suppliers, operators, as well as livestream platforms to jointly launch the JD Esports plan, promoting development for the industry, and aiming to provide a better experience for customers.

Daniel Tan, president of JD Mobile Devices said, “Games have become one of the best ways to relax and socialize for younger generations. They can also work as a bridge to increase JD’s brand awareness, attracting gamers to search for gaming devices and equipment on JD. By entering deeply into e-sports, we hope to make more contributions to this industry.”

 

(ling.cao@jd.com)

by Vivian Yang

China Entrepreneur Magazine published its first cover story in 2021 on January 5th, focusing on the topic of Chinese factories’ “C2M” movement, and recognizing that the Customer-to-Manufacturer model is becoming an important force in driving the digital transformation of factories, with COVID-19 being an accelerator of this trend.

The article, having been widely reposted and discussed on multiple media platforms, argued that e-commerce companies like JD.com and other main players on the market which have accumulated years of data, traffic, consumer’s insights and marketing means are in a race to use C2M to engage factories in China and transform them for flexible manufacturing.

“A factory revolution is happening,” said Zhenhong He, president of China Entrepreneur Magazine. “E-commerce companies, manufacturing enterprises and tech companies are the three main forces amid the race to grab factory resources in China right now.”

Behind the race for factories is a RMB 40 trillion yuan available market. Data of the National Bureau of Statistics shows that China’s total economic output in 2019 was close to RMB 100 trillion yuan, in which the industrial sector contributed 39%, or near RMB 40 trillion yuan. However, internet technologies have a very low penetration rate so far in this market, presenting an enormous opportunity for a “factory revolution”.

A study on innovation conducted by Clayton Christensen (1952-2020), the late Harvard Business School professor and the founder of the theory of “disruptive innovation” shows that only 5% of new products developed by most companies will achieve market success, while the R&D expenditures on new products can take up 50% of these companies’ total budget.

The 5% vs 50% finding resonated strongly with Dr. Bowen Zhou, chair of the JD Technology Committee: “If a company does not develop new products, it will lose market and die; but if they go for innovation, the chance for success is merely 5%. This is the deepest pain point of innovation.”

According to Zhou, JD’s technologies will help its partners to shorten more than 80% of the time to market for their new C2M products.

“We aim to build a C2M technology that is fully powered by AI, including using AI to understand customers’ potential demands, simulating users’ reactions through a neural network, and simulating the evolution of the C2M products through another neural network,” explained Zhou.

In the eyes of Dr. Jianwen Liao, Chief Strategy Officer of JD.com, C2M is the ultimate model of a mature supply chain. “Changes are happening every year in the retail industry, but the supply chain will remain unchanged. Looking across the world, most of the leading retail companies all have strong abilities in integrating the supply chain.”

Today, JD Retail manages more than 5 million SKUs and operates over 700 warehouses, with inventory turnover rate as low as 34 days, a remarkable supply chain efficiency given its scale, and the rate continues to improve.

The report noted two characteristics of C2M supply chain innovations: one is to organize products’ design and manufacturing based on consumers’ demands; the other is to minimize the intermediaries between manufacturers and end users. Zhou said that JD keeps leveraging its technologies in AI, 5G, IoT, Cloud and more to build intelligent C2M factories which can effectively connect the whole chain of production, circulation and services.

JD launched its private label brand Jing Zao in collaboration with partnered manufacturers in 2018, followed by a series of initiatives in 2019 including detailed guidance for brand partners on making products with reverse customization, customized C2M services for customers’ clothes orders, a dedicated C2M online channel for direct-from-factory products and more.

Among the total of 6.7 million manufacturing factories cross China, their level of digitalization is less than 20% at present. With the growth of their digitalization, more small and medium-sized factories will be able to connect with greater market demands, which will in turn create more opportunities for the development C2M model, the report said.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)