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JD.com is China’s largest online retail company. It serves more than 500 million people living in China. The company was started in 1998 by Liu Qiangdong, a Chinese internet entrepreneur. Liu Qiangdong had faced many disappointments in life, starting from his political career, which never actualized. He moved to a restaurant business, which collapsed, and again he created an electronic shop, which also collapsed. However, these disappointments made him strong, and he could think critically whenever a calamity strikes. In China’s 2003 SARS epidemic, he decided to be innovative and opened an online shopping company named JD.com. Since that moment, he has dedicated his time working as the CEO of the company.
Liu Qiangdong has been a thinker and explorer over the years that he has worked for JD.com. He has developed a strong team that has the same interests as him. The strength of the staff has made them initiate projects that serve the people well. Some include using drones to deliver products to people, an easy self-service portal for customers, and an online customer care platform that predicts the customer’s questions and can answer them. The company’s serene services under Liu’s leadership have made it easier for JD to win many Chinese people’s hearts.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a drawback to most businesses and enterprises. Most companies shut down because of a lack of customers or lack of supplies because of closed borders. For JD.com, it has not been the case. Liu Qiangdong’s technical team came up with strategies that could strengthen its operations during this pandemic. There has been a tremendous increase in the number of customers using JD.com’s services during the pandemic moment.
In the second quarter of 2020, 33% of the company’s revenue increased compared to 2019. The profit margin has been recording an increase since the operations of the business began. Through the CEO, the company pointed out this increase in the revenue income. Most of the gain got influenced by the 29% increase in the number of customers after the pandemic stroke. China was the epicenter of the virus; therefore, people developed a lot of fear of going out to the shop. The government also started lock downs that made people remain in their houses. These factors made people have no option but to use the online platform to order their favorite commodities, therefore resorting to using JD.com.
Most orders made online revolved around the general-purpose commodities used at home. These included supermarket goods, agricultural products, and perishable items like milk. JD.com health department, which offers online medical consultancy, also made a tremendous increase in revenue of about 400% in the second quarter of 2020. The growth came about because of the fear that people had concerning medicines they should use to contract COVID-19. In the first two months of the second quarter, April and March, the health department had hired more employees to meet the demand for the services the people needed.
JD.com did a lot of marketing activities to win the trust of people who were not its customers. Some strategies included coming up with an instant delivery method for commodities, where they delivered within and an hour or less. Another top approach was the development of applications that could facilitate live streaming. A person could use it to order what he wanted from the stores. Also, they developed applications that could facilitate shoe fitting and skin evaluation for ordering cosmetics. The CEO states that for any company to succeed, the working team must have a mind that thinks 40 years ahead.
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