Under the C2M strategy, BY-HEALTH will cater to consumers’ demands by relying on consumption data gathered by JD.
The two will also work on packaging innovation and analysis on product composition, a JD spokeswoman told NutraIngredients-Asia.
“As China’s largest retailer with more than 330 million customers, JD has access to a vast database of customer feedback.
“JD’s specialised data analytics tools, which can perform sophisticated key word searches and trend analyses, can provide valuable insights to our brand partners,” she said.
The customised products are also created exclusively for sale on JD.
With the C2M model, JD plans to introduce 100m new products by working with different brands in the next three years.
The method is able to cut the time required to survey product demand by 75% and launch new products by 67%, according to JD’s retail group CEO Xu Lei.
Case study
Schiff and Abbott are some of the health supplement firms that JD has worked with on the C2M initiatives.
In the case of Schiff, JD suggested the firm to produced a customised gift box for its brand Move Free, where bone collagen essence, glucosamine chondroitin, and liquid calcium are made available all at once.
Eventually, the sales of the gift box outperformed the sales of each of the products within the box.
“Examining consumer feedback, especially from elderly consumers, we found that many consumers often do not know what kind of products to choose to deal with joint pain. Sometimes, it is not enough to just have a single category of health supplements,” the spokeswoman said.
Bestseller
BY-HEALTH was the top-performing health supplement brand on JD.com during the double 11 shopping festival, surpassing brands such as Swisse and Schiff.
Between Nov 1 to 11, RMB$32.27m (US$4.58m) worth of products were sold via BY-HEALTH’s first party store on JD.com, up 51% yoy.
According to JD, the top three popular products from BY-HEALTH were protein powder, collagen chondroitin sulfate and calcium, and calcium vitamin D and K.
Elsewhere in Tmall, BY-HEALTH was also one of the best-performing health foods brands, with gross merchandise volume (GMV) surpassing the RMB$100m mark, on par with imported Australian brands Swisse and Bio Island.
Global healthcare association
Last month, JD also established the Global Quality Healthcare Association with more than 10 brands.
They include dietary supplement brands such as BY-HEALTH, Swisse, GNC, Centrum, Blackmores, and Doppelherz.
The purpose of the association is to provide products of superior quality to Chinese consumers.
