JD.com sets strategy to expand into China’s smaller cities, offline businesses
- Sales for December quarter were better than analysts expected, boosted by Single’s Day promotions
- JD.com will have more offline business models this year, founder Richard Liu said
JD.com, China’s second biggest e-commerce services provider, plans to expand into the country’s less-developed cities and open more offline businesses this year, according to founder Richard Liu Qiangdong.
Beijing-based JD.com will also improve its management system by embracing big data and digitisation, Liu said on a Thursday conference call after the Beijing-based company reported better-than-estimated sales of 134.8 billion yuan (US$20.2 billion) for the three months ended December. Its Nasdaq-traded shares rose 6.7 per cent to US$27.71 in US trading.
“We will take more products to low-tier cities and attract more customers,” Liu said. “We will be more open, bring more new business model to offline operation … From this year, we will have more new offline business models.”
JD.com’s better-than-expected revenue comes on the back of its sales promotions around “Singles’ Day”, the annual China-wide online shopping festival held in November. The number of the company’s annual active customer accounts increased to 305.3 million last year from 292.5 million in 2017.
The company, which counts Walmart, Google and Tencent Holdings as investors, is diversifying its main e-commerce business by investing in offline retail, finance and logistics services.