JD is firing at PDD again.

Author: Huang Yu

Editor: Liu Baodan

Following last year's call to Li Jiaqi on Double Eleven, JD Live quickly gained popularity and became an important showcase for JD's low-price strategy.

JD Live, which just received a 100% salary increase, is eager to prove its combat effectiveness to its boss, JD.com. However, some consumers still claim that the prices in JD Live are not as cheap as PDD.

Feeling wronged, JD Live, which was questioned for not comparing prices carefully, immediately defended itself. On the afternoon of January 17th, a JD small home appliance salesperson claimed during a live broadcast that they even compared prices while going to the bathroom, and pointed the finger at PDD for not being able to achieve the lowest price on the entire network despite their efforts.

The JD salesperson claimed that the IP address of JD headquarters was blocked by PDD, preventing JD salespeople and other employees from viewing the prices of PDD's billion-yuan subsidies for goods and conducting real-time price comparisons and discounts.

In addition, the JD salesperson directly called out to PDD: "Please stop blocking IP addresses and infringing on consumer rights, and please directly compare prices with us." They also encouraged consumers to upload price comparison content to the JD Live broadcast, promising to lower prices on the spot.

In this way, the two e-commerce giants have fired the first shot in the low-price competition for 2024. As of now, neither JD nor PDD have responded.

Cui Lili, a professor in the Department of Digital Economy at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told Wall Street News that JD's call to PDD represents a further escalation of the low-price competition among e-commerce platforms, and the battle in 2024 may be even more intense than last year.

It is well known that PDD has rapidly risen to prominence with its low-price strategy in the wave of consumer downgrading, and its market value has surpassed that of JD and Alibaba. Seeing their limelight being stolen by this upstart, both Alibaba and JD have begun to view PDD as their number one competitor and have humbled themselves to learn from it, firmly implementing the "low-price strategy" since last year.

It can be seen that at the end of 2022, JD.com internally called out, "Low price is the only fundamental weapon," criticizing JD for not paying attention to low prices.

In this way, JD launched a grand low-price campaign. Since last year, JD has successively introduced measures such as billions of subsidies, 9.9 free shipping channels, and lowering the threshold for self-operated free shipping, and later launched "refund only" across the platform.

PDD has three "killer moves" on its rise: slashing prices, billion-yuan subsidies, and refund only. Now, JD and Taobao have learned the latter two.

However, JD has always relied on logistics and services as its core advantages, and it is not easy to cultivate consumer awareness in terms of low prices.

It wasn't until JD Live emerged, using its experience on the front lines of the price war to open up a gap, that its salespeople stood out more than those of other e-commerce platforms.

Do you still remember the "2023 Double Eleven" that just passed two months ago? It was the first year of the "low-price war," a moment when major e-commerce platforms directly clashed. For both Taotian and JD, this "Double Eleven" was very important. It was a test of the effectiveness of their new round of organizational structure adjustments and the best window to show who had the "lowest price on the entire network" to the outside world. In this "Double Eleven" event, the #JD 采销喊话李佳琦# incident has become a hot topic.

Facing the doubts about the "bottom price agreement" and "either-or" choice, both the beauty ONE side (the live streaming company to which Li Jiaqi belongs) and the Hai's oven side have denied it. However, the subsequent exposure of the "best price guarantee" clause in the beauty ONE live streaming promotion service contract, as well as the criticism from Li Shuai, the head of JD's home appliances and home furnishings division, has made this incident a complex issue.

JD 采销 has shown its full combat power and successfully stood out in the live streaming room during last year's Double Eleven. On the evening of October 25th last year, JD Home temporarily launched the JD 采销 live streaming room, with the theme directly set as "prices lower than Li Jiaqi, starting from 90% off for in-stock items". This live streaming session attracted tens of millions of viewers.

Due to the absence of booth fees and influencer commissions, the JD 采销 live streaming room quickly gained popularity. According to JD's data, as of November 11th, the cumulative number of viewers in the live streaming room has exceeded 320 million.

JD.com has emphasized its low-price strategy for over a year and has finally found a breakthrough through JD 采销， as well as the most suitable live streaming and sales model for JD itself.

A leading small home appliance retailer told Wall Street News, "We sell our products in the JD 采销 live streaming room, and the results are quite good. The prices we offer haven't actually changed, and the discounts that consumers can enjoy are all subsidized by JD."

The JD 采销 live streaming room must have obtained substantial subsidies, otherwise they wouldn't have announced during this call-out to PDD that they will conduct real-time price comparisons and offer discounts.

To motivate its employees, JD.com has made significant moves. On December 27th last year, JD announced that the annual fixed salary of frontline employees, including those in the JD 采销 department, would increase by nearly 100%, and the average salary increase for all retail employees would be no less than 20%.

JD has also been actively recruiting JD 采销 personnel. According to the job postings, the main responsibilities of JD 采销 personnel are to develop trading and competitive strategies for the brands and products they are responsible for, conduct price comparisons with competitors, and ensure JD's competitive pricing advantage.

The low-price competition among major e-commerce platforms has continued from last year to this year. With the intensification of competition in the e-commerce industry, the low-price battle has become more intense.

With the momentum gained last year, JD 采销 is bound to demonstrate even stronger combat power this year, and PDD cannot afford to sit idly by.

The low-price battle for the new year has already begun, and no one can remain a bystander.