JD's procurement and sales have increased their salaries again.
Recently, JD. O announced on its official WeChat account that the salaries for the 2025 school recruitment positions will be fully increased. Among them, the salary of core positions such as procurement and sales, technology, and products will be increased by no less than 20%. All "JD Procurement and Sales" recruited by the school will be able to achieve a salary structure of 20 months throughout the year, with an annual bonus of up to 8 times the monthly salary, and an "unlimited" Big Boss incentive.
This is the third time since the end of last year that JD.com has announced a salary increase for frontline procurement and sales personnel.
On May 27th, more than three months ago, JD Group announced that starting from July 1st, 2024, JD's annual fixed salary for procurement and sales will be increased from 16 to 20, with no upper limit on performance incentives.
At the end of December 2023, JD.com announced that from January 1, 2024, the annual fixed salary of frontline business personnel such as JD's procurement and sales would significantly increase by nearly 100%. At the beginning of 2024, JD's retail staff would receive an average salary increase of no less than 20%.
In the past, JD.com was known to the public as a 400000 yuan express delivery company, and most of its procurement and sales were hidden behind the scenes, without directly facing users. During last year's Double 11 shopping festival, JD's live streaming sales were exposed to the public. Due to the promotion of Li Jiaqi's popularity, live streaming sales became a banner of JD's e-commerce live streaming.
In the context of salary cuts and layoffs in the Internet industry, JD's "counter market" salary increase for purchase and sales posts also seems to imply that JD has shifted the core of e-commerce competition from logistics services to price and product power.
At present, the focus of competition among several e-commerce platforms is low prices. In the early days, JD.com quickly established an advantage among consumers through low prices, and the bargaining power of procurement and sales played a key role in this process. Now, JD.com is expanding its procurement and sales scale and increasing their salaries to enable procurement and sales to better negotiate with brand merchants, further expand product categories, optimize supply chains, and improve efficiency, in order to achieve a low price strategy, "said Chen Yuefeng, founder of Lingshou Media, to Time Finance.
Embrace e-commerce live streaming
Procurement and sales, as the name suggests, refer to both procurement and sales.
Unlike Taotian, Pinduoduo, Tiktok and other forms of e-commerce to earn merchant service fees, JD's proprietary business has a higher weight in the JD platform, which earns the price difference of commodity circulation. This means that for JD.com, the importance of procurement and sales is already higher than other e-commerce platforms.
JD recruitment personnel told Time Finance that the procurement and sales position is one of the most basic and critical positions on JD.com. They are responsible for procurement, introducing and maintaining high-quality brand manufacturers and channel resources through market research and professional judgment. Through communication and negotiation, they strive to maximize reasonable procurement costs, rebates, expenses, promotions, new product launches, and other related support; Responsible for sales, guiding brand manufacturers to maximize sales revenue through effective sales strategies, developing operational and competitive strategies for the responsible brand products, and ensuring price competitive advantages.
The above-mentioned person stated in an interview with Time Finance that the main growth point of JD's campus recruitment scale this year is concentrated in the procurement and sales positions. This time, it will recruit 4000 JD's procurement and sales positions for the 2025 graduates. The enrollment committee of the procurement and sales department will be responsible for the job responsibilities of different modules according to the specific situation of the business. In the long run, JD procurement and sales need to participate in the entire business chain, including the procurement and sales live broadcast room.
Image source: Live room screenshot
During the "Double 11" period in 2023, JD's procurement and sales caused controversy by calling out Li Jiaqi's "bottom price agreement" on social media due to the price of a Haishi oven. JD.com took advantage of the situation and launched its first "procurement and sales live broadcast", bringing frontline procurement and sales staff to the front of the stage, with slogans hanging in the live broadcast room that read "It's just cheaper than Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room". This also allows JD's live streaming room for procurement and sales to quickly become popular.
"The main difference between JD's live broadcast room for purchase and marketing and other platforms' online celebrity/talent live broadcast rooms is that JD's live broadcast room relies on JD's supply chain and brand resources, and pays more attention to product quality and professional explanation than entertainment and personal charm display." Angel investor and well-known Internet expert Guo Tao pointed out.
Public data shows that during the "Double 11" period in 2023, a total of 380 million people entered the JD procurement and sales live broadcast room, and about 300 brands sold over 100 million yuan.
This achievement holds significant importance for the year 2023.
According to LatePost, at the end of 2022, Liu Qiangdong unified the consensus from top to bottom through a thorough organizational adjustment and a fierce internal speech, and determined to list the "low price strategy" as the most important strategy for JD Retail in the next three years.
Looking back at JD's entrepreneurial history, it can be found that the "low price strategy" played an irreplaceable role in JD's victory over competitors such as Dangdang, Gome, and Suning, with procurement and sales being the most advantageous weapon.
In 2023, JD.com will regain its first year of low prices. Faced with competitors such as Pinduoduo, Tiktok and Taotian, JD's specific measures include normalizing "10 billion subsidy", attracting POP merchants (third-party sellers) to open stores, embracing e-commerce live broadcast, etc.
In these specific battles, e-commerce live streaming is the most difficult and unavoidable challenge for JD.com. At the moment when Internet traffic is gradually peaking, live broadcast e-commerce is growing rapidly in the overall e-commerce market, alleviating the traffic anxiety of the platform. However, JD.com has never had a native top anchor, although it once had big anchors such as Luo Yonghao settle in and achieved good results at that time, the retention of traffic has become a problem.
The Difficulty of Top Anchors
JD.com had the opportunity to form a live streaming user base earlier and establish consumer mindset.
As early as 2016, JD.com attempted live streaming e-commerce. Since 2021, JD has carried out cooperation with Kwai and Tiktok in the live broadcast room, but it did not further explore because of the poor effect of pulling new media.
The reason for this may be found in an interview with Xu Lei, the then CEO of JD.com, in 2020. "Live streaming sales are not retail, but more of a marketing behavior. Not every platform and consumer needs this method of live streaming sales
At the same time, Taotian, Tiktok and Kwai have increased their investment in e-commerce live broadcast, creating phenomenal super anchors.
For example, Li Jiaqi and Viya from Taotian had GMVs of 11.5 billion yuan and 8.5 billion yuan respectively in their live streaming rooms during the 2021 Double 11 shopping festival.
In April 2020, Luo Yonghao joined the ranks of live video tape delivery after finishing the business of Hammer mobile phone, and quickly became the top player of audio tape delivery. After that, Crazy Little Yang, Dong Yuhui and Jia Nailiang took turns to provide topics and traffic for Tiktok E-commerce.
On the Kwai side, Simba and its "family" became the absolute top stream in the platform as early as 2019.
What is the significance of top streaming for the early development of live streaming e-commerce?
Let's first look at a set of data: in 2019, Simba announced that its "family" annual GMV reached 13.3 billion yuan, and in the same year, the GMV of Kwai was 59.6 billion yuan, that is, Simba accounted for 22%; From 2019 to 2022, the GMV of Kwai platform has increased 15 times. In the new list of "Top 10 Accounts of Estimated Sales of Kwai Live Delivery in 2023", "Simba" and his apprentice "Egg" dominated the list of "One Brother and One Sister". The two people carried nearly 30 billion yuan of goods in total throughout the year, 1.4 times the total amount of goods carried by the other eight anchors. Meanwhile, in the TOP10 ranking, Xin Xuan Group holds six seats.
A live streaming e-commerce practitioner told Time Finance that in the early stages of the development of live streaming e-commerce, platforms need top streaming hosts to attract traffic, seize users, and quickly form a scale.
Gathering top anchors is also one of the main strategies of major e-commerce platforms at present.
During this year's 618 promotion, the live streaming room of celebrity Zhong Liti's video account had an average viewership of over 10 million, with a total live streaming heat value of 420 million, becoming the first celebrity anchor on the video account to have a live streaming audience of over 10 million.
Xiaohongshu, which is striving for 300 million DAUs, has also been cultivating its own super anchors since the beginning of last year, from Dong Jie, Zhang Xiaohui, Yi Nengjing, to Li Dan, who has recently gained popularity in the grocery store industry.
But recent events such as the hairy crab battle between Simba and Crazy Little Yang, and the breakup between Dong Yuhui and Dongfang Zhenxuan also prove that big anchors are a double-edged sword for the platform.
Chen Yuefeng analyzed that based on the current consumption habits of live streaming users, the influence of top anchors is difficult to dissipate.
In fact, as the business matures, most platforms are starting to encourage more anchors to join. The above-mentioned e-commerce practitioners stated that on the one hand, this can enrich live streaming content and product categories, and on the other hand, it can reduce dependence on super anchors and form a healthier ecosystem.
JD.com, which has never stopped the trend of "buying tickets" for live streaming, has also begun to try to break through by combining its own advantages in the absence of top influencer anchors.
The popularity of the procurement and sales live streaming room has solved JD's urgent need and become a "new species" in the live streaming industry. Before last year's Singles' Day, JD.com captured the signal of expanding its procurement and sales circle, launched procurement and sales live streaming, and started more than 10 procurement and sales live streaming rooms by category, forming a matrix IP. At the beginning of this year, JD.com announced that it was urgently developing a recruitment plan for live streamers. In April of this year, the AI digital person "Caizhengdongge" made its "live broadcast debut" and also appeared in JD Home Appliances and JD Supermarket's Caizhengdong live broadcast room.
An industry analysis expert told Time Finance that the JD Procurement and Sales Live Room is an important IP established by JD Live. Through this position, the perception of JD Live has been enhanced, and a professional and low-priced user mindset can be established.
During the actual experience, Time Finance reporters found that the live streaming entrance for JD's procurement and sales is located in a prominent position, with the entrance for influencer live streaming located in the fourth position.
However, compared to the viewership of JD's procurement and sales live streaming room during the "Double 11" and 618 promotion periods, the performance of this live streaming room is usually average. Taking the JD Home Appliances and Home Furnishings Procurement and Sales Live Streaming Room as an example, the 9 live broadcasts conducted from September 2nd to September 5th had a total of 3.289 million views, with an average of 365400 views per session. Last year's Double 11, the highest viewership in this live streaming room reached over 10 million people.
And when entering the "Expert Live" page, there are only 2 recommended anchors on the homepage, and during the weekend noon time period, the best data is 100000 people. At the same time, Grey Porpoise Data Tiktok ranked first in the real-time live broadcast list. Shengzai, who sells hairy crabs, had a peak popularity of 312000, and GMV estimated that it was between 10 million yuan and 25 million yuan.
Image source: Live room screenshot
Can we break the deadlock
Although the volume of live streaming sales has not been further amplified, resulting in scale and strategic breakthroughs, it is still being seen.
At present, procurement and sales positions are given more incentives, with year-end bonuses of up to 8 times the monthly salary of "JD Procurement and Sales" personnel recruited by the school this time, and an "unlimited" Big Boss incentive. A senior HR told Time Finance that JD's salary increase incentives for procurement and sales personnel are conducive to mobilizing the enthusiasm of other functional employees and generating a catfish effect.
Newcomers have a new mission.
Entering 2024, on the basis of adhering to a low price strategy, JD.com has put forward three must win battles, and strengthening content ecology construction is one of them. I believe that richer and higher quality content will bring new traffic to JD.com, reduce customer acquisition costs, and also help build the platform ecosystem. In addition, richer content will enhance user stickiness, drive user growth, and improve traffic distribution efficiency and conversion rates, "said Xu Ran, CEO of JD.com Group and CEO of JD.com Retail Group, during this year's first quarter earnings conference call.
The procurement and sales live streaming room bears a heavy responsibility in the construction of JD's content ecosystem. JD recruitment personnel told Time Finance that JD's 2025 fresh graduates are expected to have excellent language expression, communication and coordination, and business negotiation skills in terms of soft and general qualities for recruitment, procurement, and sales positions; Skilled in integrating various resources to achieve maximum efficiency.
When asked about the GMV assessment targets for the procurement and sales live streaming rooms within JD.com, relevant personnel stated that it is currently not convenient to disclose them to the public.
It is quite difficult for JD.com to create a top tier internet celebrity anchor. The current live streaming sales may only be an attempt and may not have a very good sales effect, but this kind of attempt is worth encouraging. "Chen Lingfeng said that sales sales cannot solve all the problems currently faced by JD.com, but expanding sales scale can help further expand the product categories of JD.com and achieve lower cost advantages on the merchant side.
With live streaming e-commerce entering the second half, JD.com is facing greater pressure.
Firstly, there is still the issue of traffic. According to the Insight Report on 618 in 2024 released by QuestMobile, JD's daily life will reach 200 million during 618 in 2024, far from Taobao, Pinduoduo and Tiktok. There is an overflow effect in traffic, and conversely, there is also a contraction effect. Without top anchors, the original live streaming room for procurement and sales failed to generate sustained and large-scale traffic, which also affected the overall traffic growth of the platform and made it difficult to sustain.
Secondly, in pursuit of "more, faster, better, and more economical", JD.com still faces the problem of how to balance its strategy. Compared to other e-commerce platforms, JD's biggest advantage lies in its services, including self operated product quality, logistics, customer service, after-sales, and other aspects, which correspond to the basic needs of "good" and "fast".
According to a recent financial report from JD.com, the number of new third-party merchants added in the second quarter of 2024 increased by as much as 46% compared to the previous quarter. The growth was mainly driven by POP merchants, mainly consisting of white label merchants and individual merchants, which corresponds to "more" and "less".
According to Interface News, JD.com allows POP merchants to use Jitu and Tongda express delivery services internally. But this may also affect the user experience and undermine their perception of JD as "good" and "fast". In addition, there is also a competitive relationship between JD's self operated merchants and POP merchants, such as the allocation of traffic and resources within the platform.
And beyond that, live streaming e-commerce still has a tough battle to fight.
According to a research report by iResearch Consulting, the scale of China's live streaming e-commerce market will reach 4.9 trillion yuan in 2023, with a year-on-year growth rate of 35.2%. It is expected that the compound annual growth rate of the market scale will reach 18% from 2024 to 2026.
JD.com does not want to miss any more opportunities.
Before giving the procurement and sales positions another salary increase, on August 26th, JD.com announced that it will invest an additional 1 billion yuan in cash and traffic resources every month, focusing on high-quality live streaming service providers and influencers. At the same time, JD.com will also introduce industry experts, well-known artists and other expert level certified experts to 15 popular tracks, and provide targeted support with millions of cash and hundreds of millions of traffic.
As early as April this year, JD.com announced the investment of 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion yuan in traffic as rewards, with no upper limit, to attract more original authors and high-quality content institutions to settle in. During the "6.18" period, JD Live once again invested cash and flow support to incentivize partner institutions and creators.
JD has been frequently involved in live streaming business and hopes to help brand merchants better seize the development opportunities of live streaming e-commerce. After all, in order to cultivate the habit of watching live streams on JD.com and maintain popularity through the content ecosystem, it requires collective wisdom and effort.
From 2016 to present, after 8 years of development in live streaming e-commerce, JD's live streaming e-commerce, which has always been lukewarm, has taken its place at the table. However, in the face of the siege of Ali, Tiktok, Kwai, Little Red Book, etc., it still needs time to verify whether JD can finally deliver a satisfactory answer.
转播
