01 This Year's Double 11 JD.com Experiments with Livestreaming for Instant Retail

There has always been a conjecture in the industry: "If Meituan opened a livestream room and delivered orders within half an hour, what would happen to traffic on other platforms?" Now, this conjecture is gradually becoming a reality, but the protagonist is not Meituan, but JD.com.

This year's Double 11, JD.com's theme is "Give Life More Substance." Lin Chen, head of JD Retail Platform Business Center, stated at JD.com's Double 11 kickoff meeting that in terms of pre-sale timeliness, JD.com is adjusting its scheduling system to allow consumers in more than 200 cities across the country to experience minute-level product arrival speeds. Notably, JD.com is not just emphasizing delivery speed this time; this year's Double 11, JD.com also launched the City Life Festival, and same-city livestreaming is becoming a key focus for JD.com.

It is reported that JD.com's same-city livestreaming will be based on the livestream shopping hour-delivery model, allowing users to enjoy an immersive experience while watching online broadcasts and further experience the fun of "hour-delivery." Specifically, JD.com's app has created a "City LIVE Life Festival" in its livestream channel. Merchants and brands can activate livestream permissions after registering on JD Livestream. Livestream traffic can be precisely directed to local brand livestream rooms, covering user groups around stores, allowing consumers to experience the "want it, buy it, get it" livestream experience.

In other words, the shopping experience we imagined—"watching livestreams, being influenced, placing orders, and having items delivered within hours"—is being realized by JD.com. It is worth mentioning that from the end of last year, when Meituan cooperated with Kuaishou, to August this year, when Douyin joined forces with Ele.me, each cross-industry cooperation brought beautiful conjectures of "food delivery + livestreaming" to the industry. However, so far, these collaborations have not yet entered the stage of large-scale implementation.

JD.com data shows that during this year's Double 11, JD Daojia's hour-delivery service has been launched in over 200,000 offline physical stores nationwide. This Double 11, JD Daojia and JD Hour-Delivery will provide consumers in more than 1,800 counties and cities with instant retail services for "all-category goods delivered within hours, fastest within minutes." Throughout this process, JD.com has taken the lead in bringing this brand-new "livestream + instant retail" model to consumers. Once again, JD.com is running at the forefront of the industry.

02 Facing Industry Competition JD.com Competes on Speed and Experience

In fact, this "livestream e-commerce + instant retail" model was already explored by players two years ago. On November 27, 2020, the new livestream e-commerce model of "livestream shopping with 1-hour delivery" pioneered by Dada Group was awarded the "2020 Top 10 Consumer Innovation Cases." At that time, Dada combined "livestream e-commerce" with "1-hour delivery." JD Daojia, the local instant retail platform under Dada Group, selected brands and products for livestreaming based on seasonal and consumer demand indicators. After consumers placed orders in the livestream room, stores within 3 to 5 kilometers received the livestream orders, and Dada Now, another local instant delivery platform under the group, delivered the products within 1 hour.

It is worth noting that although Dada had made similar attempts at that time, due to the low market share of JD Daojia livestreaming and the fact that instant retail was still in its infancy, the new model's scale was small and failed to ignite the industry.

Two years later, instant retail is experiencing a major industry explosion, and this brand-new consumption experience of livestream shopping with hour-delivery is being promoted to more consumer groups. When the era of instant retail arrives, JD.com faces new troubles.

Objectively speaking, JD.com's delivery speed is already very strong across the industry. If not in remote areas, general products can be delivered the next day, and even orders placed before 11 a.m. can arrive the same day. After acquiring Dada Group, JD.com further improved delivery speed to about 1 hour. But compared to the 30-minute delivery of food delivery, the delivery speed still needs improvement. Because the fate of the strong is to be defeated by another strong.

Last month, Meituan refreshed the record for retail delivery through drone delivery. Data shows that the first iPhone 14 order in Shenzhen was delivered in just 5 minutes and 56 seconds. Four words to describe the battle of instant retail: every second counts. Therefore, to make efforts on timeliness, this year's Double 11, JD.com has linked its integrated supply chain in the same-city field. It is reported that JD Logistics continues to expand the scale of pre-positioning for pre-sales, placing products in warehouses at all levels closest to consumers, and delivering immediately after consumers pay the balance. It is expected that consumers in more than 200 cities across the country who purchase pre-sale products on JD.com will have the opportunity to experience the fastest minute-level receipt experience.

Image source: JD Logistics

Playing the game of product pre-positioning has always been JD.com's forte. Currently, JD.com has not disclosed specific front-warehouse layout plans, but from the above measures, we can see JD.com's determination in delivery timeliness. After solving the delivery timeliness problem, the development speed of JD.com's instant retail has exceeded imagination.

In April this year, JD Daojia and JD.com launched a same-city shopping festival through dual channels for the first time. They further practiced the new instant retail model of "ordering online, delivering from stores, and receiving products within minutes," linking "10,000-store livestreaming," with over 10,000 physical stores supporting instant delivery of products sold in a single livestream session.

In the second half of the year, JD.com expanded its instant retail business to omnichannel development, which means instant retail will no longer be limited to the "JD Daojia" app. Many physical stores under JD.com and cooperative stores connected to JD's supply chain are joining in. Specifically, this includes tens of thousands of JD self-operated or managed stores such as JD MALL, JD New Department Store, Qixian Supermarket, JD Auto Care, JD Pharmacy, and JD International Cross-border Experience Stores, as well as millions of offline cooperative stores connected to JD's supply chain. With this, JD.com has expanded instant retail products from previous urgent items like food, fresh produce, and medicine to all channels and all categories.

Image source: JD.com

This time, instant retail livestream e-commerce has also expanded from the original JD Daojia app livestream to the livestream channel of JD's main app. Currently, JD.com's annual active users have reached 580 million, and hundreds of millions of user traffic are flowing into instant retail and livestream e-commerce.

It can be said that in the face of this industry-wide competition in instant retail, JD.com is striving to reclaim the two core advantages of delivery speed and consumer experience.

03 The Direction of Double 11 Has Changed Instant Retail Brings an E-commerce Revolution

In fact, with the explosion of instant retail, traditional e-commerce promotions like Double 11 are gradually being transformed. In 2009, Alibaba launched the Double 11 shopping festival, and Taobao quickly grew into a leading e-commerce platform. Subsequently, JD.com launched the 618 shopping festival, consolidating the duopoly pattern of Chinese e-commerce through mid-year promotions. Later, Pinduoduo emerged, and the platform's billion-yuan subsidies divided a portion of the e-commerce promotion landscape.

In 2021, livestream e-commerce bargaining broke out, and platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou grew stronger. Livestream rooms offer the lowest prices every day, making traditional promotions "routine." New models represented by instant retail have long lacked a sense of participation in major promotions, such as Meituan. But when Meituan upgraded its strategy to "retail + technology," traditional promotions like Double 11 will usher in new changes.

The reason is simple: once consumers experience the faster, more immediate, and simpler "food delivery-style" instant retail, many people cannot go back. No matter how fast e-commerce is, it becomes an outdated shopping method for them. At first, it's three meals a day, then urgent flowers and gifts, even medicine, and gradually this model expands to less urgent daily necessities, even durable appliances.

The latest data has proven this trend. On October 21, Suning.com announced a strategic cooperation with Meituan, with over 600 stores nationwide joining Meituan. Two days later, on October 23, Suning.com's order volume on Meituan exceeded 30,000 orders. It can be said that instant delivery of large appliances like air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines to homes is no longer a fantasy.

Image source: Yicai

As more and more users become accustomed to purchasing daily necessities through instant retail, the huge demand forces the supply chain to upgrade and reduce costs, and prices will eventually converge with e-commerce platforms. In this process, consumer demand is dispersed into daily high-frequency ordering actions, which is a huge change to the "stockpiling" consumption model of traditional promotions.

Therefore, all e-commerce platforms are increasing their investment in instant retail. In addition to JD.com's recent experimentation with the new "livestream e-commerce + instant retail" model, livestream e-commerce platforms like Douyin are also quickly entering the field. In August this year, Douyin issued a notice soliciting opinions on the new "[Douyin E-commerce Supermarket] Hour-Delivery Product Information Release Specification." Recently, there are reports that Douyin Supermarket is in the early pilot operation stage. Currently, Douyin Supermarket has launched pilots in four cities: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Huizhou, and Dongguan. Some consumers in these four cities can find the "Supermarket" entrance in Douyin Mall and shop in Douyin Supermarket.

In summary, in this arena of continuously evolving consumer experience, JD.com, with its advantages in all categories, all channels, and integrated supply chain, is the first to explore the new model of instant retail + livestream e-commerce. Meanwhile, platforms like Meituan and Douyin are also continuously exploring more categories, expanding instant retail from food delivery to daily necessities and 3C home appliances.

Double 11 e-commerce promotions are being changed, and traditional e-commerce models are being changed.

Source: E-commerce News Pro (ID: kandianshang) Author: Lao Dian

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