Although not as well-known or celebrated in much of the western world, for China and a number of other East Asian countries, Chinese New Year (also known as Lunar New Year or Spring Festival) is the most important holiday of the year. Celebrating the beginning of a new year on the Chinese lunisolar calendar, it is a tradition that has gone back for thousands of years, and to this day millions of people put up decorations, offer sacrifices to ancestors, eat reunion dinner with family on New Year’s Eve, give red envelopes filled with cash and other gifts and set off fireworks, all to see out the old year and welcome in luck and prosperity for the new one.

During this at once celebratory and reverent one-week period, spending quality time with family is perhaps the most important tradition to uphold, but it can be difficult for those whose work involves providing essential services to do so. This fact has not gone unnoticed by JD.com chairman Richard Liu, who in 2014 established a ‘family gathering’ program for couriers of JD Logistics who live apart from their children. JD would pay for their children’s travel to the visit the city where the couriers work for family reunion during the Chinese New Year holiday.

As China’s largest online retailer and its biggest overall retailer, JD.com plays an important role in Chinese New Year. The company was founded by Richard Liu in 1998, who still remains the company’s chairman today after serving as its CEO for nearly two decades. The business began as a tiny stall run by Liu in an outdoor electronics market, but within five years he had grown it into a chain of electronics stores in major cities across China. It was the SARS epidemic of 2003 forcing him to temporarily shut down his brick-and-mortar locations that saw him first explore e-commerce, but just one year later he had made the decision to move his business exclusively online.

Sometimes referred to as ‘the Amazon of China,’ JD.com has separated itself from other e-commerce companies by building its own extensive logistics network and supply chain, as well as its investment in and use of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence to improve efficiencies and customer experience. When Liu first made the decision to take JD.com’s logistics in-house in 2007 many believed it was a poor business move that would end in disaster, but today provides the company with one of the strongest fulfillment infrastructures of any ecommerce company in the world with a network of approximately 1,400 warehouses totalling over 26 million square meters of space.

Recognizing its dual role as both a supplier of goods and services for millions of customers and an employer to over 300,000 logistics staff, JD.com has sought to find solutions that create value for all of its stakeholders. Since 2012 JD.com has provided standard delivery service during the Chinese New Year holiday, in 366 cities and 1,700 districts and counties across China. JD Logistics, the publicly-listed logistics branch of JD.com, announced this year that it would provide RMB 500 million ($73.58 million) in allowances to front-line workers who opted to work during the holiday, a move that put their benefits at higher than the national standard.

This money was partially allocated to the ‘family gathering’ program, which in recent years has also been extended to childless employees as an extra stipend for their holiday work. According to one courier who works in Beijing, she was the first employee on her team to apply for working during the holiday, and plans to use the allowance to bring her two children from the Hebei province to Beijing to celebrate while also earning bonus funds for her time spent working. JD Logistics also offered a more flexible rotation policy for employees who signed up to work during the festival, allowing them to enjoy vacations before or after the week-long national holiday.

JD.com’s commitment eleven years ago to provide standard delivery service during Chinese New Year without delays or extra fees has remained to this day, and these provisions for workers in combination with their fleet of 600 autonomous vehicles and over 100 indoor robots, they were able to successfully deliver on that promise for this year’s celebrations. As customers have come to trust JD.com to stay good on providing non-stop delivery service during the festival, during the 2023 festival customers continued purchasing a number of ‘routine’ products with the transaction volume of mobile phones, home appliances and health products on JD.com all seeing substantial increases when compared to previous years.

Another trend of significance during the holiday period was the continued growth of ready-to-cook, ready-to-heat and ready-to-eat food which saw six-fold growth in transaction volume year-over-year. While food has always been an essential element of Chinese New Year celebrations, in recent years as ready-made food has grown in popularity in China people have been choosing to spend less time in the kitchen and more with their families.

From meaningful holiday dishes such as chicken soup with fish maw, to those with complex preparations such as Sichuan-style fish filets with pickled vegetables, to those that require special cooking skills such as the delicacy known as ‘Buddha jumps over the wall’ which requires hours to simmer a variety of seafood, meat, and other nutritious ingredients, as the quality of these items pre-prepared has grown so too has the popularity for purchasing them.

As a provider of services as well as goods, JD.com has also seen after-sale services grow in popularity, with mobile phone warranty service growing by 296 percent year-over-year, home appliance repairs growing by 83 percent year-over-year, and home cleaning services growing by 302 percent year-over-year. A time to clean house and renew, customers know they can rely on JD.com during the Chinese New Year to help them with these tasks.

According to JD’s observation on the consumption trends in different tiers of Chinese cities  during Chinese New Year holidays, customers living in higher-tier markets, which are larger cities, had a strong demand for fresh food, flowers and pet supplies. Meanwhile, lower-tier markets that are located in more rural areas purchased more mobile phones, home appliances, furnishing and decoration products. As young people return to their familial homes from big cities during the holiday, they also help to spread their online shopping habits to their relatives and friends in smaller villages and towns, and the lower-tier market purchase habits are indicative of this.

A time of celebration, togetherness, and renewal, Chinese New Year is one of the biggest events of the year. During the festival that involves hours of preparation in addition to the desire to spend as much time together as possible, the last thing anybody wants to be worried about is working, or not receiving a package on time. JD.com has managed to alleviate these problems for both their employees and customers, giving peace of mind to millions and ensuring a joyous start to the new year.