E-commerce a bellwether of economic recovery
Retail portals enjoy surge in demand as consumer spending habits change after epidemic outbreak
Singles Day brought vitality to Beijing’s e-commerce industry as two platforms located in Beijing — JD and Suning — announced their sales reached a new high respectively.
E-commerce company JD reported its transaction volume hit 271.5 billion yuan ($41.1 billion) during the Singles Day promotion period.
Suning embraced a year-on-year surge of 75 percent in online orders. Among the many products, 5G smartphone sales increased 18 times year-on-year, laptop sales increased by 94.5 percent and esports equipment increased by 265 percent.
Besides the sales, the number of delivery orders topped 240 million in Beijing from Nov 1 to 12. The average daily number of packages processed reached 20 million, an increase of 50.7 percent over the same period last year, according to the Beijing Postal Administration.
JD’s automated warehouse system played to its advantage in high logistical speed and precise deliver.
On Nov 11, the Beijing government invited nearly 40 journalists from more than 20 foreign media outlets, including The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence FrancePresse and Tass News Agency, to visit JD’s automated logistics center located in the Beijing EconomicTechnological Development Area.
At the center, an array of automated facilities such as intelligent sorting systems and automated ground vehicles — a shuttle system — are used.
The AGVs can recognize a grid of codes on the floor and use them for route planning and obstacle avoidance. With this, it becomes possible for human pickers to stay on a work platform and wait for the AGVs to come to them.
Thanks to the system, any picker in the center can complete 250 orders per hour, three times more efficient than the traditional method.
At present, there are more than 330 AGVs running in the center, according to Wang Yuchuan, a staff member from JD’s communication department.
The center is able to handle as many as 800,000 orders per day, providing robust support for shopping festivals like Singles Day, Wang said.
As COVID-19 prevention and control has become a daily reality in China, long-term changes in consumer behavior and effects on the economic structure have been observed during this year’s Singles Day, according to JD.
According to a JD report, the willingness of consumers and merchants to participate in Singles Day has grown.
This year, more than 20,000 brands saw their cumulative transaction volume increase more than 100 percent during the period. Another 3,000 brands saw their transaction volume double year-onyear within the first 10 minutes on Nov 11.
The customer-to-manufacturer model has also become a new trend during this year’s online shopping spree.
Based on customer feedback, JD provided data support to brand partners and has helped them to develop tailored products.
During Singles Day, the transaction volume of C2M products saw a 228-percent year-on-year rise.
“E-commerce is the bellwether of China’s consumption recovery this year. With an increasing share in overall consumption, it played an important role in supporting suppliers to overcome the influence of the pandemic,” said Shen Jianguang, chief economist at JD Digits.
“At the same time, the rise of new business formats such as fresh food e-commerce are adding new boosts to this sector,” Shen said.
E-commerce is driving an overall upgrade in consumption, which is also manifested in foreign brand sales on JD. Companies from the United States, Japan and Germany sold the most imported products on the platform.
“The recovery in overseas markets has boosted China’s exports, helping factories to resume production and enhancing consumer confidence. All these provided positive conditions for the Singles Day event to hit a new high,” Shen said.
According to data from Beijing Customs, from 12 am to 4 pm on Nov 11, it dealt with 210,000 customs declarations worth 170 million yuan in cross-border e-commerce transactions.
Of them, 145,000 customs declarations involved online orders of imports from bonded warehouses. They were worth 150 million yuan in combined sales value, increasing by 24 times and 125 times respectively over the same period of last year.
According to Bai Feng, an official from Beijing Customs, it has launched six innovative policies this year covering quality monitoring to declaration, aiming to promote new formats of cross-border ecommerce in the capital.
In response to Singles Day, Beijing Customs organized a special work team to investigate the needs of enterprises. They launched a 24-hour service to guarantee the huge workload be completed.
This year, cross-border e-commerce commodities such as perfume, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products and drinks have been popular with Beijing customers. In the next step, customs is to expand the importation of pharmaceutical products to meet the demand of high-quality medical products for COVID-19 prevention.
The Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, where JD’s headquarters is located, is a key development zone that enjoys multiple beneficial policies.
Using integrated digitalization, networking and intelligence, the zone has fostered a number of emerging industrial clusters. By focusing on high-quality development, it is developing a group of strategic emerging industrial bases and demonstration areas.