At the JD Qi Fresh Huiju store in Changning District, Shanghai, the store was bustling with people before the end of work hours, with long lines forming at the checkout counters. Shoppers spent the most time lingering in front of items labeled with "Piercing Price," as the prices of these goods were indeed very competitive.

"This is already the second time in nearly two weeks that I've come to the JD Fresh Supermarket to buy durians. The cheapest they were was . yuan per jin, and the meat yield is extremely high. For over a hundred yuan, you can get a durian that yields 、rooms of meat. It's really a great deal," said customer Auntie Wang, who was selecting durians.

Huiju Store is JD Fresh's first store in Shanghai, marking JD.com's entry into the instant retail market in East China after establishing its presence in Beijing, Tianjin, and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen region. "Piercing Price" has always been JD Fresh's low-price strategy. Starting from a certain date this year, JD Fresh launched the "Piercing Price, Truly Cheap and Not Afraid to Compare" campaign nationwide, offering discounts on all products across both online and offline channels. The product range includes meat, poultry, eggs, beverages, alcohol, snacks, vegetables, fruits, baked goods, and seafood.

The JD Fresh Shanghai flagship store, which opened at the Changning Joy City at the end of this month, has also selected dozens of products to participate in the aforementioned activities, including seafood that is caught and delivered directly from the ocean to the table within hours, fresh fruits and vegetables sourced directly from high-quality production areas, daily freshly baked pastries, and authentic wines supplied directly from the winery, all at prices significantly lower than those of other instant retail platforms.

The instant retail platform has always been perceived as expensive, but with JD Qiuxian clearly promoting low prices, a new round of price wars in the instant retail sector has begun.

Sustainable low prices at JD Fresh Huiju Store, in addition to offering a vast selection of over a thousand products, also features specialized areas such as Oyster Island, Rice Wine Bar, and Salad Bar. Oyster Island brings together global oysters for on-site selection, with JD Fresh Kitchen providing on-site processing, freshly opened and cooked, with two French Gillardeau oysters priced at just yuan. In the seafood section, a king crab weighing .- is available at a "penetrating price" of just yuan.

"There are currently several items being sold at 'penetration prices,' and we optimize and replace them weekly based on sales performance," said Zhao Xin, the manager of JD Seven Fresh's Shanghai Huiju store. "We hope that through 'penetration prices,' customers will recognize us: good and cheap products will be maintained for a considerable long time, and JD's low prices are sustainable."

The effect of the "Breakthrough Price" has been evident. Data from JD Fresh shows that within three days of the campaign's launch, both the number of online orders and the number of users making transactions have achieved triple-digit year-on-year growth. Popular items across categories such as fruits, vegetables, aquatic products, and meat and eggs have sold out. In addition to the "Breakthrough Price" products, JD Fresh's Shanghai Huiju store also offers multiple Fresh private label products, including milk, salmon, Arctic shrimp, and other fresh food packages, which are often snapped up shortly after being listed.

Before opening, we conducted research and found that within a kilometer radius of this store, there were a Hema store, a Meituan Xiaoxiang store, and a Dingdong Maicai that could be ordered online. When setting the product prices, our principle was to be lower than the competitors' prices but with better quality. Wang Yaodong, the procurement and sales head of JD Qiangong East China, told reporters that the result was that the daily customer flow exceeded 10,000 people in the first two weeks after opening, and during the National Day holiday, the customer flow exceeded 100,000 people.

Low Price and High Quality in Recent Years, whether it's e-commerce platforms or offline supermarkets, including restaurants and coffee shops, "competing on low prices" has become an important competitive strategy. Previously, some instant retail platforms compromised on quality to control costs, leading to a crisis of consumer trust. JD Qiang's low prices, however, come with strict conditions.

Wang Yaodong revealed to reporters that his goal is to provide consumers with high-quality, cost-effective products. "While maintaining low prices, ensuring quality and service is even more important, always striving to be fresher than others." Taking the example of the Chongming vegetables and other landmark products delivered fresh within hours, JD Fresh Shanghai Huiju Store ensures the freshness of vegetables by adopting a direct-from-farm model. Vegetables are picked in Chongming and put on the shelves for sale within strict hour limits, and are rigorously sorted and packaged to guarantee their freshness and quality.

In the JD Fresh Shanghai Huiju store, there is also a quality control inspector constantly moving through various corners of the store, checking the quality of the products on the shelves at any time and removing any problematic items immediately; the procurement and sales team also come to the front desk, understanding customer suggestions for optimizing products on-site. There was once a procurement and sales staff who listened to the suggestions of two young people who stopped by the sake shelf but did not make a purchase. They added smaller-sized sake varieties to the shelf to meet the needs of young people for instant consumption.

Unlike its peers, JD Seven Fresh's Shanghai Huiju store features homemade meals personally developed by chefs from five-star hotels, with even the salad dressing ingredients being a unique recipe. In terms of service, the Shanghai Huiju store has also implemented online ordering with offline delivery, with an average delivery time of minutes for areas within three kilometers.

It is not easy to achieve a balance between "price and quality," as it tests the platform's supply chain capabilities. JD Qiangxi's consistent low prices are achieved by reducing supply chain costs. Many products are directly sourced from the origin, effectively eliminating the middleman in the commodity circulation process and squeezing out the price markup, thereby achieving low prices.

For example, the Shine Muscat grapes sold in the store are directly sourced from Rudong, Nantong, Jiangsu; vegetables such as Hangbai seedlings, cabbage sprouts, and heart seedlings from Ningxia are also directly traced back to the source of the industrial chain, with procurement and sales directly purchasing from farmers in the fields. Additionally, some products in the JD Qiangxian Supermarket come from the JD main site, and the advantages of centralized procurement have also significantly reduced costs.

Additionally, JD Seven Fresh's Shanghai Huiju store is currently scouting locations for the expansion of more front-end warehouses. Compared to physical stores, front-end warehouses can reduce operational costs, offering consumers in a wider area the opportunity to purchase high-quality fresh supermarket goods at affordable prices. Through the efficiency of instant retail delivery, consumers can enjoy the expected instant retail service that aligns perfectly with their expectations.

It is noteworthy that, this year, e-commerce giants have all increased their investment in instant retail, with some also restarting the front-position warehouse model. Behind JD Fresh's "good, fast, and cheap" lies the exploration of an innovative "store-warehouse-network" three-in-one instant retail model, combining offline supermarkets, self-operated front-position warehouses, and e-commerce platforms.

The latest report from the Market Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce shows that by the end of the year, the scale of the domestic instant delivery market reached 100 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of .%. The instant e-commerce industry also maintained a high compound growth rate, with an average annual growth rate exceeding %, and it is expected that by the year, the market scale of instant e-commerce will exceed 1 trillion yuan.

With the advancement of JD Fresh's model, the competition in the trillion-dollar instant retail market may become even more intense.