(Newswire.net — November 19, 2019) — Chinese consumers spent at least $68 billion this week through e-commerce platforms for the largest annual shopping event around the globe – the November 11 Singles’ Day sale – surpassing online sales in the U.S. during Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. E-commerce giant JD.com reported cumulative sales of $29.2 billion for their 11-day sales event started on November 1, and the whole country is now in full swing for the online shopping season initiated by the country’s e-commerce giants a decade ago. JD credits a continued pursuit toward the highest quality products and services to their record-breaking Singles’ Day metrics, while high performance in the country’s lower-tier cities, deeper integration across the platform and industry-leading green initiatives continue to drive JD’s success.
About Singles’ Day
Only in China could an unofficial holiday celebrating singledom grow into the biggest e-commerce shopping day in the world. Started as an “anti-Valentine’s Day” by Chinese college students at Nanjing University in 1993, the Singles’ Day tradition to buy a gift for oneself to celebrate – or lament – one’s single status has morphed into a sales event crushing records around the globe. The annual shopping event on November 11 – Singles’ Day, Guanggun Jie, or Chinese 光棍节 – is an online shopping holiday used to promote self-love and self-care, while focusing on the celebration of being single, buying gifts for yourself versus buying for others. The date 11/11 is used to celebrate the number “1,” or one-one-one-one, and is also known around the country as “bare sticks holiday” because of how it looks numerically. Since its inception, Singles’ Day has grown to become the largest 24-hour shopping event in the world, surpassing the U.S. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.
Actually, China’s Singles’ Day obliterates Black Friday records. In 2018, Chinese consumers treated themselves to more than $23 billion worth of goods from JD.com alone during the annual event – compared to only $6.2 billion in online sales in the U.S. Black Friday and another $7.9 billion reported for Cyber Monday. The holiday has become the largest shopping day in the world – offline and online.
JD.com’s Record-Breaking Singles’ Day: By the Numbers
Reporting nearly $29 billion transaction volume (reflecting cumulative sales November 1-11), JD noted a 60% year-over-year rise in customers from lower-tier cities (defined as 3-6 tier cities), citing that 70% of new customers came from this demographic, and the growth for the entire JD.com operation rose nearly 28% YoY. For JD PLUS members – a premium membership service with free shipping and a range of benefits – the company reported an excess of 15 million registered members whose average consumption volume was up four times that of non-PLUS members.
Logistically, JD reported that 90% of the country’s administrative districts and countries received same- or next-day deliveries while orders fulfilled by one of JD’s automated warehouses increased 108% YoY and 40,000 tons of delivery waste was prevented by JD’s industry leading waste-reduction initiatives using slimmer tape and paperless operations. With
Consumer goods saw a major increase year-over-year: laundry pods were reportedly up 259%, cat litter boxes up 232%, pet disinfectants rose 243% and wine sales doubled over the same period from 2018. For beauty products, JD reported the category as a whole rose 79% YoY while facial skincare was up 86% and perfume and makeup sales rose 80%. Additionally, JD broke a historical global record for watches sold in a single day with over 1 million sold on November 11 alone.
The e-commerce platform reported over 30 million household necessities sold during the event, with small toiletries up 110%, smart home products up 100% and MUJI sales – JD’s partner, Japanese apparel and household goods retailer – up 200%.
JD cited the top countries who sold imported goods on the platform to be the U.S., Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. Over 20,000 Dyson hair dryers sold in 10 minutes, milk sales rose 5x YoY, brands Penfolds and a2 reported sales up 5 times and 2.5 times respectively, and TVs from Sony – Samsung – Toshiba – Phillips – and others increased 300% YoY.
As for one-day data on November 11, JD.com’s record-breaking sales event boasted jaw-dropping metrics this Singles’ Day. In the home appliances category, 10,000 65-inch TVs sold in 8 seconds, more than 10,000 sweeping robots in 1 minute, over $14 million in air conditioner sales in 20 seconds as well as more than $14 million refrigerator and washing machine sales in 1 minute. Midea sales surpassed $71 million in just 15 minutes, and GREE sales hit the same record in about 25 minutes. In electronics, more than 220,000 mid-to-high end headsets and 100,000 Al smart speakers both sold in a span of just five minutes. In consumer goods, coffee capsules went up 8 times, tampons increased sales by 400%, craft beer and imported beer soared up 10 times and smart pet products increased a whopping 69 times, all YoY from 2018. JD reported the fresh food category on their platform skyrocketed, selling on 11/11 900,000 eggs, 600,000 kiwis, pork sales, chicken sales and beef sales up 350%, 210% and 170% YoY, respectively.
For JD Health – an e-commerce platform for pharmaceutical products like vitamins and supplements – the retailer reported a slew of new records: new consultations set in the first 30 minutes on 11/11 surpassed the total of the entire day in 2018, vaccine and medical beauty service sales grew over 10x YoY, and dental services saw an increase by 317% YoY. JD SEA – the division focusing efforts in Southeast Asia – reported and increase in orders up 273% YoY; and JD.ID – the brands online retailer to Indonesia – orders up 159% YoY.
JD’s Investment in Lower-Tier Cities
JD’s investment strategy in China’s lower-tier cities, defined as the country’s “3-6 tier cities,” has been in place for years as they have led the industry in creating logistics and infrastructure networks to cover these areas in China previously untraversed. As seen by 2019 Singles’ Day metrics, JD reports that lower-tier cities are a key growth area for the platform in their efforts to lead the industry, and JD has its sights on building purchase and investment opportunities for Jingxi – the e-commerce platform focused on providing this demographic with good value, quality products, and further developing logistics to provide the rapid and trustworthy delivery for which the retailer has come to be celebrated. Lower-tier cities drove new customer growth during Singles’ Day, with the number of customers in lower-tier cities placing orders building 60% YoY while over 70% over new users on JD belong to this demographic.
High quality, big ticket items were the biggest buys for lower-tier demographics for Singles’ Day on JD.com, as top categories included home appliances, mobile phones, desktops, sports, baby and maternal products. Popular categories with new users from this demographic included oil, shampoo, massage equipment, gifts and foot care basins, JD reports. These consumers also added to growing categories for luxury products, furniture, sports and apparel, curling irons and smart toilets.
Jingxi is part of JD.com’s ongoing strategy to invest and engage with consumers in lower-tier cities to drive new growth for the platform – a focus since JD’s IPO in 2014. Jingxi focuses on using social e-commerce to delight consumers with incentives, rebates and promotions as marketing tools to encourage online shopping on the platform. During the Singles’ Day promotion, nearly 40% of new customers to JD came from Jingxi, while over 70% of Jingxi users came from lower-tier cities, 55% of whom were women.
“With Jingxi, we’ve developed a platform that can better serve the consumption needs of lower-tier cities,” says Simon Han, Vice President of JD.com and Head of Jingxi. “JD connects manufacturers of quality products with consumers, providing a clear channel for these goods to reach lower-tier cities consumers.”
Growth in Consumption & Record-Breaking JD PLUS
JD reports after 2019 Singles’ Day that clearly, Chinese consumers remain confident in spending, and the pursuit of quality is a main factor across the country. JD PLUS memberships surged during the sales event, and while new customer acquisition remained strong in lower-tier cities, the platform also reported solid growth in tier 1 and 2 cities among middle class users. The Singles’ Day sales event reported average consumption volume by JD PLUS members up four times compared to non-PLUS members, and members’ spending reflected a focus on higher quality products. One JD PLUS member’s purchase reportedly reached nearly $67,000.
“JD PLUS members are some of our most loyal users and this Singles’ Day was no exception,” said Head of JD Plus, Chunhui Meng. “PLUS is not just a membership but a lifestyle – our insights reveal that PLUS members like to enjoy their lives, eat good food, care for their families and travel – and we’ve designed our membership to suit these needs by partnering with all sorts of organizations, online and offline. We’ll have a few new partnerships before the end of the year – stay tuned. By helping facilitate Chinese consumers’ pursuit for high quality products and services, JD PLUS has grown to over 15 million members.”
The e-commerce retailer’s C2M initiative leverages JD’s data and analysis capabilities to help brands identify new products to bring to market, and popularity surged during the Singles’ Day event. For every five displays sold, two were C2M products; and whether through C2M or other new product initiatives, JD remains the platform of choice for brands wanting to launch new products.
E-SPACE: JD’s Omnichannel Integration
JD uses its technology to seamlessly integrate the experiences of buying online and offline, a key component in the platform’s overall strategy to put the customer at the center of each retail experience and create a “boundaryless” space to go beyond traditional sales techniques.
Queue E-SPACE – JD’s biggest omnichannel pursuit to date in this initiative that officially opened November 11 – set to offer the company’s largest fully immersive experience store to date. On Monday, JD reported more than 30,000 customers had visited the store with sales totaling over $1.4 million in the first hour of opening. Believed to be the largest experience store in the world, E-SPACE is completely covered by 5G, boasting a 50,000 square meter shopping space in Chongqing – a mall roughly the size of seven soccer fields. JD E-SPACE sets to redefine the consumer shopping experience in an immersive space equipped with dynamic price tags to ensure consistency of online and offline pricing, allowing for seamless purchase and delivery of over 200,000 products available for sale in the store, all equipped to ship by JD’s Logistics within one day for people in the area.
E-SPACE allows JD’s customers to fully interact with state-of-the-art, innovative, smart products from more than 1,000 of the world’s leading brands through various themed experience areas. In particular, the space brings world-class experiential shopping to the electronics and home appliances categories, enabling consumers to touch and test products in-store and then buy online, hassle free. The space also includes groundbreaking brand-experience zones, including Apple’s largest authorized offline experience store, Microsoft’s first future smart home experience area in China, GE’s first omnichannel home appliances store in China and ninebot’s first authorized offline experience store the country.
“JD’s boundaryless retail strategy is to integrate online and offline retail, enabling customers to buy whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want,” said Zisheng Yang, head of Offline Business, JD Home Appliances. “Equipped with the most advanced technologies and state of the art products, JD E-SPACE provides consumers not only shopping convenience but also an immersive and interactive experience.”
Industry-Leading AI and Marketing
For Singles’ Day, JD leveraged big data and AI to help customers navigate a “barrage of deals” offered during the sales event. The platform used product-, category-, channel-, store-, brand-specific coupons to help consumers save time and energy in finding the perfect items. Marketing solutions employed innovative, industry-leading technology to help customers make the right selection while giving unique rewards along the way. JD’s live streaming of customer engagement drove average daily sales increase 15 times during Singles’ Day, compared with their 618 anniversary shopping festival.
JD’s AI open platform Neuhub handled nearly 30 billion requests during Singles’ Day, providing content review, sentiment analysis and voice recognition technology support; and the platform’s Smart Sentiment Customer Service handled more than 34 million inquiries while JD’s StarLink IoT platform supported over 10,000 offline stores transforming to smart stores, integrating over 1,000 technologies and applications.
Deeper, Faster, Greener: The Progressions of JD’s Industry-Leading Logistics
While focus and investment continues to grow for JD’s lower-tier initiatives, the e-commerce retailer plans for even more improvements in logistics operations across the country to enhance the speed and quality which first put JD on the map. This Singles’ Day, JD covered 90% of China’s administrative districts and counties with their famed same- or next-day delivery speeds.
With this initiative, commitment to responsible consumption remains at the forefront, and advocacy for a sustainable supply chain leads the global industry in logistics. On Singles’ Day, JD Logistics prevented more than 40,000 tons of waste, from recycling to saving over 18.6 million meters of tape. Meanwhile, cold chain incubators were used 1.4 million times while 50,000 logistics pallets from the JD Cloud Box project were shared and used in the industry – an amount equivalent to saving 12,500 trees. From November 1-9, Rooftop photovoltaic power generated nearly 30,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in JD’s Shanghai Asia No.1 logistics park, a number equal to one 1.5P air conditioner continuously on for three years. From November 1-9, over 5,000 new energy vehicles traveled 9 million kilometers, which is equal to 115 laps around the Earth
“Our commitment to sustainable logistics and supply chain is bringing us very tangible results,” said Feng Gao, Head of Green Stream Initiative, JD Logistics. “A clear example of this is that over the course of the Singles’ Day sales period which we are just wrapping up, we’ve reduced 40,000 tons of delivery waste through implementing recyclable packaging, using slimmer tape, going paperless and more.”
JD.com Setting the Industry Standard in China & Globally
As China’s largest online retailer and its biggest overall retailer, JD.com is setting new records by way of integrating strategy with new demographics around the country. China’s largest cities already rival global metropolises in the variety of clothes, electronics and other goods that can arrive at the door – by JD standards, often less than a day later; but in some of its most advanced cities like Beijing and Shanghai, online shopping is already a major part of daily life, leaving limited room for growth. As a result, e-commerce companies are increasingly turning their efforts to smaller cities and rural areas – the lower-tier cities – where disposable income remains relatively high, in part due to lower living costs, and new consumers look forward to better, faster options.
For these customers and nationwide, JD.com continues to set the standard for online shopping through its commitment to quality, authenticity and its unparalleled product offering; as JD’s nationwide fulfillment network continues to grow, providing standard same- and next-day delivery for a population of more than 1 billion – a level of service and speed that remains unmatched globally.