Despite its growing competition with Alibaba-run Tmall and Taobao, JD.com still holds a strong position among Chinese consumers and offers overseas merchants an unparalleled gateway into the country’s e-commerce market. With over 200,000 merchants, JD.com is the largest e-commerce marketplace in China, and non-Chinese brands can benefit from its wide range of features, distribution options, and consumer demographics.
To build its thriving business, JD diversified into multiple segments, including healthcare, fintech, logistics and more. These businesses are younger and growing at much higher rates than the company’s e-commerce business.
While electronics and home appliances are a significant portion of JD’s overall sales, it also has a number of other products for sale to consumers. These include beauty products, health supplements, baby milk formula, and household goods.
JD’s omnichannel fulfillment system enables it to deliver goods directly to consumers. For example, if a customer orders a mask online, JD’s systems can determine that the product is located at a partner offline store nearby that can fulfill the order immediately.
This approach allows for a seamless shopping experience, and helps reduce product returns. As a result, the company reports higher than expected profits.
A key tenet of JD’s strategy is to avoid a steep learning curve for customers and employees, and instead use technology to improve experience, increase efficiency and lower costs. A prime example of this is the autonomous delivery robot.
The company’s robots are designed to appear friendly and approachable, and are built for a wide range of scenarios, from university campuses to public roads. It’s even able to deliver packages without human intervention in select circumstances.
In addition, it’s able to sense customer sentiment and respond accordingly. This means that it can identify and proactively address a spike in sales or an issue that needs to be addressed quickly.
For instance, if a retailer noticed that sales of certain items were soaring during the COVID-19 lockdown, it would know that the demand was high enough to cause a problem for the company and that it had to stock up or stabilize prices.
This ability to spot and react to trends is an important part of its success, and a major reason why it’s the fastest-growing e-commerce company in China.
Unlike Alibaba-run Tmall and Taobao, which are primarily consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platforms, JD operates a B2C e-commerce marketplace that is specifically designed to help international brands enter the Chinese market. While this might be a challenging task, it can offer foreign merchants an easy way into the market and a lucrative opportunity to sell to Chinese shoppers.
It’s a streamlined process that focuses on introducing foreign merchants to the Chinese market, and it requires a relatively small investment from the brand.
Once you’ve determined which category of product your business would be best suited for, you can begin the registration process. This process will involve submitting a few documents, including your brand’s business registration, trademark, and licensing agreements.
Once your application has been approved, it will take up to 5 business days for your store to go live. Once your store is live, you’ll be able to begin selling on JD.