E-Commerce – B2C – Strategy of Jingdong Mall (360buy)

Suning, Dangdang, Tencent (QQbuy) and Amazon China face tough competition from Jingdong Mall (also called JD and 360buy previously).

In 2012, the company reached sales of USD 9.7 billion. The goal for year 2013 is  USD 16 billion.

The current strategy of JD is to enhance the company’s business through e-commerce, logistical & technological platforms, and online finance. A partnership with a social network will be difficult: SinaWeibo is already the partner of TMall and WeChat is logically the future partner of QQBuy.

 

More about JD.com:

Jingdong is a leading integrated network of retail business. The seller is committed to providing high-quality suppliers and service platform for consumers providing rich quality products, convenient services and affordable prices.

JD creates trust by the majority of users using it. Trust is essential in mobile commerce.  Jingdong has millions of premium users, operating thousands of goods brands, more than 200 million daily visits. Jingdong website was more visited than TMall website in May 2013.

Jingdong self-built logistics system is strong consisting of seven large logistics centers, storage centers in 27 cities, nearly 1,000 distribution stations , 300 from mentioning dots, covering 1076 administrative districts. JD.com guarantees same day delivery with real-time item tracking on maps via mobile devices.

Future of Facebook: Emerging Markets are Key!

 

You can see that the number of users of Brazil+India+Indonesia > users of the United States of America

e-Commerce Firm + Social Media Firm = Gold or Why Alibaba strategy with SinaWeibo is right

Companies like Amazon and Alibaba don’t control all the steps of the consumer purchasing process. They will never do.

@value2020 American & Chinese eCommerce – October 2012 – https://value2020.wordpress.com/

However, firms can influence the consumer behavior.

Where are people more personal on the Internet?

Mainly on social media.

After identifying a need, a consumer searches for information. External research is conducted when a person has not enough knowledge about a product or service, which then leads her/him to seek more information, especially when a person’s previous experience is limited or deemed inefficient.

We distinguished 3 types of sources:
-personal sources: e.g. word of mouth from colleagues, friends or family
-public sources: e.g. online forums, consumer reports
-marketer dominated sources: e.g. corporate and brand websites, sales persons, advertising

The Influence of Social Media

Social Media has a strong influence collecting and sharing tastes, interests, opinions on products and services. We already explained how important it was for firms like Facebook back in 2012. Social media gathers all types of sources the consumer needs.

If the e-Commerce firm is involved in a social media, the firm is more likely to influence the purchasing decision purchase and get the revenue from the consumer.

Why not a partnership Amazon-Facebook?
Why not a partnership 360buy-WeChat?

+4% Month to Month in May 2013 for WeChat & SinaWeibo – Half Social Sharing Coming from them and Qzone

Rising Use of QR Codes in China

KPCB published a new report of Internet trends for 2013 in May 2013 through Mary Meeker and Liang Wu. This report confirms predictions of VALUE2020 as mobile usage (code scanning) and WeChat.

Below the summary as stated by them on their website:

“There are now 2.4 billion Internet users around the world, and the total continues to grow apace. Mobile usage is expanding rapidly, while the mobile advertising opportunity remains largely untapped. The report reviews the shifting online landscape, which has become more social and content rich, with expanded use of photos, video and audio. Looking ahead, the report finds early signs of growth for wearable computing devices, like glasses, connected wrist bands and watches – and the emergence of connected cars, drones and other new platforms.”

In this report, they explain Chinese users now scans 9 million QR Codes every month, up from 2 million last year. This is, in part, explained by the expansion of WeChat that includes a QR code scanner. 9 million a month is a small number for China and we should expect this number multiplied in the dozen of months to come.

A QR Code makes it more convenient for Chinese users to operate their smartphones. In general, VALUE2020 believes a QR Code is one of the accesses to mobile commerce. Therefore, it will be an important tool for mobile Internet use in the near future.

Any user with a payment application like Alipay on their smartphone can pay with their phone in offline stores by scanning the QR code on the products and entering their  account name and password.

As well as being a new way for people to get access to goods and services, scanning QR Codes is becoming fashionable among mobile users.

The usage of QR Codes is endless: payments for products, redeem coupons, access to practical information like transport times or any information related to a product, social networking like WeChat and information discovery.

Sources:

VALUE2020

KPCB, Mary Meeker and Liang Wu, URL: http://www.kpcb.com/insights/2013-internet-trends