Singles’ Day success for JD as it ramps up omnichannel strategy
Transaction volume on JD.com reached a record RMB 159.8 billion (approximately $23 billion) from 1st to 11th November, during its Singles’ Day shopping festival.
“There is a noticeable shift in China toward quality over price, which we see in the growing numbers of consumers who are willing to pay more for branded and imported goods,” says Lei Xu, CMO of JD.com and CEO of JD Mall. “By establishing trust with consumers and brands, thanks to our zero-tolerance policy toward fakes and our innovations in areas such as blockchain traceability for product safety, JD is in a unique position to meet that demand.”
This was the first event in which the e-commerce giant worked closely with bricks and mortar ventures as part of its Retail as a Service (RaaS) strategy to open its technology and infrastructure to other retailers and industries. More than 600,000 offline stores were able to attract customers to their own Singles Day promotions.
JD developed a new game, for example, to help them pull in more traffic via WeChat’s mini-programme platform. Users were granted points based on the number of steps they took, and by visiting offline stores they got additional steps that could be exchanged for products and prizes. Over 200,000 stores and 200 brands took part during the sales period.
It also opened its largest 7FRESH supermarket to date in Langfang, Hebei Province, on Singles Day. This received more than 10,000 customers within a single hour on 11th November. JD’s offline portfolio also includes unmanned convenience stores and JD Retail Experience Shops.
“After more than a decade of building out technology and infrastructure for our own retail business, we will spend the next decade extending our capabilities to enable and empower both online and offline retail innovators,” says Dr. Jianwen Liao, Chief Strategy Officer at JD. “We see the future of retail as one without boundaries, and we are working to bring consumers true boundaryless retail, where they can buy whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it.”
