Liu Qiangdong's clone came in handy

Author | Liu Baodan

Edit | Zhou Zhiyu

26 years ago, Liu Qiangdong opened the first counter in Zhongguancun, selling CDs, and doing everything himself. Nowadays, the e-commerce market is becoming more and more volatile, and Liu Qiangdong once again chose to end up in person.

On the evening of April 16th, Liu Qiangdong's AI clone "Procurement and Sales Dongge" landed in the live broadcast room of Jingdong Supermarket and Jingdong Home Appliances and Home Furnishing. Judging from the data of the night, Liu Qiangdong's live broadcast effect has ranked among the top e-commerce platforms, and his debut was successful.

After many years, Liu Qiangdong started the live broadcast with the help of AI technology and returned to the front line. But JD.com's market environment has changed dramatically, and it faces a market full of competitive pressure.

Over the past year or so, JD.com has undergone drastic reforms. Liu Qiangdong promoted Xu Ran, who is good at finance, to be the CEO of JD.com Group and retail, and also personally shared his growth experience with employees and raised wages for procurement and sales personnel. Jingdong has also gradually come out of the low point and entered a critical period of climbing.

Now, it is through the boss to "personally" go into battle, and JD wants to make efforts in content e-commerce.

But if JD.com wants to make a way out in the field of content e-commerce, it still has homework to make up, and the next thing is to see whether consumers are willing to pay for Liu Qiangdong.

Make a move

Liu Qiangdong is undoubtedly JD.com's strongest IP, and he is also the first e-commerce boss to "appear" in the live broadcast room in the head e-commerce.

Wall Street learned that in less than 1 hour after the broadcast, Liu Qiangdong's AI digital human live broadcast room had more than 20 million views, reaching the level of Li Jiaqi's daily broadcast on Taobao, and the cumulative turnover of the entire live broadcast also exceeded 50 million.

Compared with live broadcast, digital human live broadcast still faces many problems, such as the lack of emotional appeal, which is the attraction of live broadcast e-commerce. If it is really Liu Qiangdong who goes live in person and strengthens the interaction with netizens, the final live broadcast effect will be better.

However, Liu Qiangdong is willing to use his own image as an IP to create a digital person, which has revealed JD.com's determination to develop content e-commerce.

In March, JD Retail set the direction of development in 2024 and upgraded the content ecology to an annual strategy for the first time. Insiders close to JD.com said that JD.com will focus on promoting basic content capacity building in the future, and at the same time make efforts in various aspects such as content and product richness.

Recently, JD.com announced that it would invest one billion in cash and one billion in traffic resources for content e-commerce. Jingdong hopes to incubate the top talent as soon as possible, and plans to select the top 100 talents at the end of the year, only in the reserve stage, Jingdong has invested hundreds of millions of yuan in cash.

Vigorously deploy content e-commerce, and JD.com wants more traffic.

In the past year, JD.com has been constantly brushing its presence. Whether it is the Double 11 procurement and sales team taking the initiative to call Li Jiaqi, or participating in the CCTV Spring Festival Gala and Hunan Satellite TV's New Year's Eve, JD.com intends to regain the attention of users.

However, JD.com's traffic increase is not significant. According to the report released by QuestMobile, during the Spring Festival in 2024, JD.com's average daily traffic will be less than 100 million, ranking at the bottom of the five trillion-dollar e-commerce platforms, and in terms of per capita time growth, JD.com's growth rate is 18%, lower than Pinduoduo.

Low traffic means that the platform is not attractive enough to users, which is the first problem that JD needs to solve, and content e-commerce is the best solution to the problem.

At present, among the major e-commerce platforms, JD.com's content e-commerce foundation is the weakest.

In fact, as early as 2016, JD.com tried live streaming to bring goods, but the company only used live broadcast as a marketing tool. Xu Lei, the CEO at the time, once said that live streaming is not retail, but more of a marketing behavior, with the purpose of attracting new customers, clearing inventory, promoting new products, and livestreaming C2M products. This also made it miss the early dividends of live broadcast e-commerce.

Live e-commerce focuses on content, whether it is Dong Yuhui of Douyin, Crazy Brother Yang, or Li Jiaqi of Taobao, they are all top streamers who have grown up from the platform. JD.com lacks content genes and has not been able to cultivate its own top stream so far.

With the return of Liu Qiangdong, JD.com began to vigorously develop content e-commerce. During the 618 period last year, Jingdong invited Luo Yonghao, and "Make a Friend" also officially settled in Jingdong, and Jingdong's content e-commerce also entered the fast lane of development. On Double Eleven, Jingdong's live broadcast room was out of the circle, and Jingdong also had its own official live broadcast IP.

Until this time, Liu Qiangdong appeared on the camera for live broadcasting, and JD.com's content e-commerce once again became the focus of attention in the industry.

Zhuang Shuai, an expert in the retail e-commerce industry, believes that although JD has a rich supply of goods and a complete warehouse and distribution fulfillment system, the disadvantage lies in the large difference between the content ecological construction and the operation ideas of the e-commerce platform, and there is no strong content operation team to support it, so the construction of the content ecology has not been able to form a close integration with the shelf mall.

In Zhuang Shuai's view, the content ecology is still a supplement to the traditional e-commerce giants, and in the process of content ecological construction, JD needs to form a differentiated competitive situation with the content e-commerce platform.

Liu Qiangdong's appearance is just the beginning, and the next thing is to see how JD breaks through from the track of content e-commerce.

Climbing

In the past year, JD.com has experienced a difficult time since its establishment, and its stock price has continued to fall, with the lowest price of HK$81.55, only one-fifth of its peak.

Liu Qiangdong also shouted on the intranet that it must change, otherwise there is no way out. "In any case, I will not lie flat, and I hope that my brothers will not lie down. ”

In this case, Jingdong has truly entered a year of change, from the launch of the "10 billion subsidy" channel to the landing of the low-price strategy, from personnel changes to user experience, Jingdong has started frequent strategic adjustments again after many years.

Judging from the financial report, JD.com has come out of the lowest trough. Aside from the impairment factor, JD.com's non-GAAP (non-GAAP) net profit in the fourth quarter of last year was 8.4 billion yuan, exceeding market expectations. JD.com's share price has also recovered, and on the earnings day, JD.com's market value rose by nearly 40 billion yuan.

However, behind the increase in profitability, it is more of a driving role in reducing costs and increasing efficiency. If JD.com wants to truly achieve performance growth through business transformation, it needs more efforts and actions. This also requires it to enter the current hot content e-commerce field and compete with new and old players.

JD.com hopes to steadily promote the low-price strategy, while maintaining its strategic focus, further focus on its main business, and continue to strengthen its core advantages.

For example, JD.com announced last month that it would work with partners to invest 6.5 billion yuan in "trade-in" in 2024, especially in the 3C digital and home appliance categories, JD.com will invest 3 billion yuan in subsidies respectively.

JD.com is also constantly expanding its circle of friends. Since the beginning of the year, JD.com has reached cooperation with Midea and Lenovo in the next three years, setting online sales targets of 210 billion yuan and 120 billion yuan respectively, further strengthening the advantages of core categories.

Now, JD has played the card of content e-commerce, especially Liu Qiangdong's live broadcast in person in the form of AI digital human, which also shows that JD wants to complete the puzzle of content e-commerce.

The above-mentioned JD insiders said that JD.com's first entrepreneur digital human live broadcast form, in addition to increasing JD's content ecological construction, is also to consolidate JD's low-cost mentality.

Wall Street has learned that JD Cloud Yanxi Digital Human has moved from technological exploration to large-scale implementation. JD.com's low-price mentality mainly relies on third-party cooperative merchants, and by reducing the cost of merchant live broadcasts, JD.com's low-price strategy can be better helped.

However, if JD wants to make a difference in the track of content e-commerce, it must also do a good job in the content ecology, and at this point, JD is still facing greater competitive pressure.

In March, Taobao announced that it would invest 10 billion yuan in cash and 100 billion yuan in traffic for content e-commerce. Earlier, Taobao established a live broadcast e-commerce company, aiming to compete for talent resources through a "nanny-style" fully managed service. Douyin's position is even more difficult to shake, with 8.84 million authors earning income through bringing goods in the past year.

From a counter in Zhongguancun to becoming a leading e-commerce platform in China, and then being surpassed by Pinduoduo, JD.com's experience is a history of development from growth, rise to surpass. Now, JD.com is regaining its fighting power in order to return to its former position.

Half a month ago, Liu Qiangdong announced the upgrade of corporate culture through a letter to all employees, and he proposed to be technology-oriented and customer first. This is to answer the question of how JD can survive better after the age of 20.

From returning to low prices to rethinking culture, if there is a cycle of corporate growth, then, JD.com is trying to start anew from the beginning. This time, Liu Qiangdong is still taking the lead.

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