---
title: "Liu Qiangdong Restarts JD's Community Group Buying"
description: "JD's community group buying business 'Jingxi Pinpin' has been upgraded to 'JD Pinpin', signaling Liu Qiangdong's return to the sector. The move includes brand upgrades, recruitment, and organizational restructuring, aiming to compete in the low-price and lower-tier market."
author: "老电"
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published: "2023-07-28"
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# Liu Qiangdong Restarts JD's Community Group Buying

> JD's community group buying business 'Jingxi Pinpin' has been upgraded to 'JD Pinpin', signaling Liu Qiangdong's return to the sector. The move includes brand upgrades, recruitment, and organizational restructuring, aiming to compete in the low-price and lower-tier market.

**Jingxi Pinpin Upgraded to JD Pinpin**
**Liu Qiangdong's personally led community group buying business is making a comeback.**
Recently, JD's community group buying business 'Jingxi Pinpin' released a brand upgrade announcement. The announcement stated that starting from July 27, Jingxi Pinpin will officially be renamed JD Pinpin.
Specifically, after the brand upgrade, the mini-program icon, name, logo, etc., of Jingxi Pinpin will gradually be updated to 'JD Pinpin', while the original functions of the mini-program will be retained.
Image source: Jingxi Pinpin
In response to this upgrade, the platform stated that it will hold itself to stricter standards in the future, and will also iterate and upgrade in aspects such as products, fulfillment, and operational services.
It is worth noting that **in addition to the brand upgrade, JD has begun recruiting for the community group buying business.**
We saw on recruitment websites that JD has started recruiting BD, product managers, and other relevant talent in second- and third-tier cities including Hefei.
For example, the job responsibilities for the Jingxi Pinpin Group Leader Product Manager position include: responsible for the product work of the Jingxi Pinpin group leader side, based on the community group buying business process and the current state of the retail industry, to build a digital and intelligent product capability for group leaders centered on deep insights into community user needs; explore the B2B2C business model, integrate resources from brand owners, B-end group leaders, C-end consumers, etc., to form a reasonable business closed loop...
At the same time, at the end of June, JD had already adjusted its new organizational structure, and the upgraded JD Pinpin should belong to JD's newly established Innovation Retail Department.
Image source: Boss Zhipin
To briefly summarize, **brand upgrade + recruitment + structural adjustment, Liu Qiangdong's signal to restart community group buying is increasingly evident.**
But in reality, JD has not performed well in the community group buying track in the past.
Last year, JD's 'Jingxi Business Group' underwent large-scale adjustments. The business lines were almost completely dismantled, with some directly cut and others merged into the retail business.
The once highly anticipated community group buying business 'Jingxi Pinpin' successively withdrew from cities over two years, and now only Beijing and Langfang in Hebei continue operations.
(Screenshot from Jingxi Pinpin)
The 'Jingxi' main site, which focuses on social e-commerce, has become increasingly marginalized, and the outside world generally regards it as being in a 'free-range' state.
According to estimates by CITIC Securities, in the second half of 2021 alone, the total losses of Jingxi Pinpin and community e-commerce businesses reached approximately 3.5 billion yuan.
Currently, Liu Qiangdong has been back for more than half a year, and JD is fiercely competing in low-price e-commerce and lower-tier markets.
**As for whether the returning JD community group buying can reverse the defeat, everything remains unknown.**
**Liu Qiangdong Restarts Community Group Buying**
**Why is JD restarting community group buying at this time?**
Actually, the reasons are quite clear to us. Since the end of 2022, after Liu Qiangdong once again emphasized JD's 'low price' feature, the platform's multiple actions have targeted the incremental growth of the lower-tier market.
JD's community group buying is no exception.
In 2020, JD established the Jingxi Business Group, covering specific offline business content such as the Jingxi e-commerce APP, Jingxi Pinpin, Jingxi Convenience Stores, Jingxi Tong, and Jingxi Da. At that time, it planned to use JD's supply chain, logistics, and technology capabilities to serve the lower-tier market.
**On New Year's Day 2021, Jingxi Pinpin, personally led by Liu Qiangdong, was officially launched.**
Huge subsidies became an important expansion method for Jingxi Pinpin. According to reports, Liu Qiangdong once offered a 20 million yuan reward to any team that captured the largest market share in any region.
Unfortunately, competition in the community group buying track was far more complex than imagined, and JD entered relatively late. Ultimately, the high losses led JD to abandon this new business in a timely manner.
**At a time when low price has become the core direction of JD's retail business, the lower-tier user market where community group buying operates cannot be absent.**
Image source: 'JD Merchants' public account
As Liu Qiangdong said, 'Low price is the most important weapon for our past success, and it will be the only fundamental weapon in the future!'
The brand upgrade of JD Pinpin is also to further enrich low-price supply and regain the low-price mindset.
Data shows that as of April 2022, the monthly active users in the domestic lower-tier market reached 692 million, accounting for 58.4% of mobile internet users.
In March this year, JD Retail CEO Xin Lijun identified the four must-win battles for JD Retail in 2023 as the lower-tier market, supply chain middle platform construction, open ecosystem construction, and same-city business. **Among them, the 'lower-tier market' was placed first.**
Of course, in addition to the core goal of competing for low prices and lower-tier users, JD has also prepared many weapons for the return of Jingxi Pinpin.
In terms of organizational structure, JD Group has newly established the Innovation Retail Department, which will integrate businesses such as Qixian and Pinpin into independent business units. This business will deepen the layout of offline retail business and explore innovative models.
**As for the leading general, Liu Qiangdong did not personally take the field this time, but found the former JD veteran Yan Xiaobing.**
Looking back at Yan Xiaobing's resume, he has made significant achievements in online-offline integrated innovative retail and low-price competition systems.
Before August 15, 2012, Liu Qiangdong posted on Weibo that within the next three years, JD's major home appliance products would have zero profit, while ensuring they would be at least 10% cheaper than Gome and Suning. This also became the famous '815 Price War' in Chinese e-commerce history.
In this price war, JD's home appliance business successfully challenged Suning alone, once and for all establishing JD's strong position in 3C retail. Yan Xiaobing was then the general manager of JD's home appliance business unit.
Image source: Baidu Baike - Yan Xiaobing
At the same time, during his tenure in charge of JD's home appliance business, JD acquired regional chain Five Star Appliances, built a JD home appliance specialty store system in township markets, and laid out multiple JD Super Experience Stores in first- and second-tier cities such as Chongqing, striving to recreate a JD home appliance business offline.
**Judging from the leading general, JD is quite confident this time.**
It is worth noting that the Qixian business, which is in the same department as Jingxi Pinpin, has already seen breakthroughs.
At the end of June, JD had already put two self-operated front warehouses into operation in Beijing, exploring the layout of front warehouse business with a self-operated e-commerce model, and adopting the 'e-commerce traffic + self-operated model + e-commerce logistics delivery' approach in fulfillment mode.
The supply chain advantages accumulated in the self-operated e-commerce field, combined with the delivery efficiency advantages brought by front warehouses and dedicated riders, are beginning to bring better services and experiences to consumers.
**JD also has a trump card in the community group buying field that cannot be ignored.**
On December 11, 2020, JD Group issued an announcement stating that it would strategically invest 700 million US dollars in Xingsheng Youxuan. Through this investment, the two parties will cooperate closely in data, technology, warehousing, and short-chain logistics, better take root in the lower-tier market, serve rural areas, and revitalize the local economy.
Currently, although Xingsheng Youxuan has withdrawn from many provinces and regions, it has achieved profitability in Central China, especially in its home base of Hunan.
Overall, from the perspective of JD's internal layout, this time JD Pinpin has shown advantages in strategic direction, organizational structure, and leading pioneers.
But it is undeniable that beyond JD's ambitions, the market share of community group buying has basically been seized by Duoduo Maicai and Meituan Youxuan.
**JD to Serve Multi-Level Consumers**
Industry data shows that in 2022, Meituan Youxuan and Duoduo Maicai both set a transaction volume target of 250 billion yuan. In the end, Duoduo Maicai completed approximately 180 billion yuan in transaction volume, while Meituan Youxuan completed about half of its target.
In terms of order volume, in 2022, Duoduo Maicai's average daily order volume was about 35 million pieces; Meituan Youxuan's average daily order volume was about 32 million pieces.
Among them, Duoduo Maicai's current operating loss rate has narrowed to single-digit percentages, and it is expected to achieve overall break-even between 2023-24.
**While the two giants continue to exert efforts, industry competition in community group buying has gradually stabilized.**
Image source: Duoduo Maicai
**In comparison, in Q4 2021, Jingxi Pinpin's daily order volume was around 8 million. It can be seen how much market competition pressure the restart of JD Pinpin faces this time.**
In addition to the most direct external competitive pressure, JD also faces an internal strategic balance issue.
Currently, JD's main direction is to focus on low prices and lower-tier markets, competing with Pinduoduo for user mindshare and industry traffic.
At the same time, we can also see that in the mid-to-high-end market and among users who value service more, JD has taken 'speed' to the extreme, achieving sustained profit growth.
Therefore, within JD and in the industry, there has been ongoing debate about JD's low-price strategy.
The most typical example is JD Logistics: should it focus on low prices, continue to provide high-quality services, or both?
Liu Qiangdong's reflection in an internal meeting last year may give us an answer.
**He pointed out that 'JD should serve multi-level consumers, considering both the wealthy and ordinary people.'**
In simple terms, **JD wants it all, satisfying both price-sensitive users and retaining high-net-worth individuals.**
JD has always been a company good at fighting tough battles.
But obviously, compared to the past 'price wars', how to differentiate users at different levels and serve 'multi-level consumers' is clearly a more complex issue.
**Overall, JD's low-price strategic shift is still in the exploration phase.**
The 10 billion subsidy, third-party merchant parity, the opening of the logistics system, and even the launch of JD Pinpin this time are all about regaining advantages in low prices.
Low price is a systematic comprehensive capability, rooted in the supply chain. Behind the appearance of low prices is lower operating costs and higher operating efficiency based on the supply chain.
This systematic capability also inevitably requires the platform to optimize various retail businesses and service links from an overall and global perspective.
According to previous official JD introductions, Jingxi focuses on the needs of 700 million lower-tier users, with products featuring high quality and low prices.
**Whether JD Pinpin's return to the forefront this time can change the industry landscape is hard to predict, but this business will surely act as a catfish, stirring up the long-silent community group buying market.**


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