JDDJ, China’s leading local on-demand retail platform of the Dada Group, recently hosted the second annual Merchant Brand Ceremony in collaboration with the China Chain Store and Franchise Association (CCFA).
Celebrating the 6th anniversary of JDDJ, the event focused on digital innovation in the retail sector with the company selecting the top Retail Digital Innovation Cases of 2020 and discuss some of the growing trends in China’s retail industry.
(File photo: agencies)
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated innovation for the digital economy around the world with global businesses embracing digital transformation to drive sales and optimize the customer experience. For China, however, much of life was already online pre-pandemic, with the country leading the world and accounting for nearly half of global e-commerce sales.
Despite this, and according to a study found in “Understanding Chinese Consumers: Growth Engine of the World” conducted by McKinsey in March 2020, Chinese consumers affected by the pandemic increased their frequency of online grocery shopping by 70%. To cater to growing demand, China’s leading O2O retailers have proved innovative by moving focus to enable digital omni-channel business models, providing a greater range of digital services and an improved online shopping experience.
Philip Kuai, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Dada Group said, “In the era of micro e-commerce, booming on-demand retail has become a huge opportunity and digital transformation a key focus for China’s enormous retail industry. Over the past year, digitalization, omni-channel support, and all-category options have proven to be superior business models. JDDJ, working together with our retail partners, has realized many excellent and practical cases of these strategies.”
“Digital transformation has become a major trend in China’s retail industry as many pioneering retail enterprises and leading digital empowerment platforms like JDDJ spring up,” said Jianzhen Peng, Secretary-General of CCFA. "Together with JDDJ, we have systematically recommended the best representations of the most applicable and most worthy cases of retail digital transformation on the platform in 2020. We hope these cases can serve as a reference for more retail partners looking to enhance their customer digital experience.”
As the post-pandemic future draws closer, brands and retailers are having to rethink their business models. Increasingly, brands are understanding online channels as imperative to reaching modern consumers, but there still remains many unknowns for how to best incorporate offline with online: posing a challenge for retailers looking to promote sales while efficiently allocating resources.
For major supermarket chain operator CR Vanguard, the switch to an omni-channel strategy has allowed them to adjust focus from product research towards greater understanding and serving their consumers. Together with JDDJ and a host of digital tools, CR Vanguard has developed new operational strategies looking at products, users, and overall marketing. As a result, throughout 2020, overall sales on the 1,800 stores launched by CR Vanguard on JDDJ increased by 220%.
Around the time of the 2021 Lunar New Year, JDDJ partnered with G-Super in launching a 9-day exclusive shopping festival called Super Merchant Day. The event aimed to integrate the online and offline retail businesses, including retailers, stores, brand owners, and e-commerce platforms, to innovate marketing strategy to improve online sales, user base, and brand influence. As a result, G-Super saw new records in both sales and order volume during the 9-day event, with sales increasing by 740% year-on-year.