The First E-commerce Battle Of The Year, JD.com Targets Supermarkets

In the spring of 2026, the smoke of battle in the e-commerce world started with everyday necessities like rice, oil, and salt.

Recently, JD.com officially announced that its app has launched the "Billion Supermarket" channel. This channel is integrated into national subsidies and JD Supermarket and mainly focuses on fresh produce, snacks, grains and oil seasonings, cleaning supplies, and other food and daily necessities.

In addition, JD.com also made a high-profile announcement that it plans to invest over 20 billion yuan in product subsidies over the next three years to help partner brands achieve an additional 200 billion yuan in sales growth.

It is worth mentioning that JD.com previously launched the Billion Subsidy channel, but unlike the "Billion Supermarket," its Billion Subsidy channel focused more on low-frequency items like 3C products. This time, JD.com is further increasing its investment in supermarket categories through the "Billion Supermarket."

However, JD.com's "new move" seems somewhat familiar. Just a month ago, Pinduoduo also announced the internal testing of its "Billion Supermarket" channel, extending Pinduoduo's core "Billion Subsidy" strategy to supermarket categories.

Over the past year, major companies have frequently battled in food delivery, instant retail, and offline supermarkets, each busy "planting flags" in the other's territory. The launch of the "Billion Supermarket" by Pinduoduo and JD.com is therefore not surprising.

However, in this grand retail battle, the moves of these major companies inevitably start to look increasingly similar. So, in this "Billion Campaign" targeting supermarkets, who exactly is JD.com fighting against?

1. Big Companies Are Busy Building Supermarkets

Before JD officially launched the 'Billion-Yuan Supermarket,' major companies had already made their moves.

Alibaba's Tmall had long had Tmall Supermarket; Meituan upgraded 'Meituan Grocery' to 'Little Elephant Supermarket' at the end of 2023; Pinduoduo also started internal testing of the 'Billion-Yuan Supermarket' channel a month ago. Supermarkets seem to have already become a key battleground for Internet giants.

JD, arriving somewhat late, has also shown its determination. JD stated that the subsidy for the 'Billion-Yuan Supermarket' will surpass that of all previous electrified product categories, making it the category with the largest subsidies currently available in JD's Billion-Yuan Subsidy channel.

The logic behind this is not difficult to understand. Whether it is Meituan upgrading "grocery shopping" to "supermarkets," or Pinduoduo and JD.com expanding a "supermarket channel" on the basis of shelf e-commerce, the essence is the desire to expand their business ecosystem.

On the one hand, "supermarkets" come with inherent recognizability.

In the minds of consumers, "supermarkets" almost encompass all high-frequency essential daily goods and fresh food. If JD.com can leverage the "Billion-Yuan Supermarket" to extend the consumer mindset from "buy 3C products on JD.com" to "buy daily necessities like oil, rice, and salt on JD.com," it can use high-frequency supermarket orders to drive the platform's daily active users and user stickiness.

Whether it is Pinduoduo or JD.com, they hope to use real financial investment to leverage users' daily habits of opening their platforms. Once traffic comes in, expanding new profit points naturally follows.

On the other hand, traditional e-commerce platforms are eager to get rid of traffic anxiety.

As consumption demand gradually returns to rationality, mainstream categories operated by traditional e-commerce platforms, such as apparel, beauty products, and 3C products, are approaching the traffic ceiling. Consumers' attention and purchasing desire for these non-essential categories are also gradually weakening.

In contrast, supermarket categories have higher repurchase rates, making them not only a "traffic entry" for e-commerce platforms to enter local life but also a key lever for expanding into the lower-tier market in an era of consumption downgrade through a "low-price strategy."

In fact, more than a decade ago, Alibaba and JD.com had already set their sights on this "fat" supermarket market, successively establishing "Tmall Supermarket" and "JD Supermarket." This was not only a battle of online capabilities between the two e-commerce giants but also their integration of offline supermarket resources. For example, Alibaba invested in RT-Mart's parent company, Sun Art Retail, in 2017.

However, Alibaba completely divested from Sun Art Retail in 2025, and JD.com also sold off Yonghui Supermarket. Behind these large companies selling off supermarket assets, in addition to focusing on their main business, it also reflects their determination to invest more in self-operated retail.

Since last year, riding the wave of the instant retail battle, large companies like JD.com, Meituan, and Alibaba have been expanding offline supermarket formats.

Currently, Hema (Hema Fresh + Hema Box) has more than 900 stores nationwide; JD.com has opened five JD Discount Supermarkets in one go; Meituan's Xiaoxiang Supermarket is also planning its second and third stores.

Whether for defensive positioning or offensive expansion, "supermarkets" serve as a high-frequency, essential traffic entry point and have become a crucial battleground for giants vying for instant retail. This is a fight that cannot be avoided.

2. Everyone wants 'more, faster, better, and cheaper.'

But running a supermarket business is actually not easy.

Hema has been deeply cultivating the fresh food retail sector for ten years and has only just crossed the profitability threshold; in recent years, traditional offline giants like Yonghui, RT-Mart, and China Resources Vanguard have also fallen into difficulties, triggering a wave of large-scale store closures.

At its core, this is because today's consumers are becoming increasingly picky. They not only pursue cost-effectiveness but also value quality and freshness. This means that, whether online or offline, supermarket formats must excel simultaneously in all four dimensions of 'more, faster, better, and cheaper.'

However, the traditional key account (KA) model in supermarkets requires going through multiple layers of distribution, which inevitably keeps costs high; furthermore, the conservative product selection logic of distributors often struggles to keep up with the rapid iteration of consumer trends.

Coupled with increasingly monotonous store layouts, consumers have gradually lost the desire to 'browse leisurely.' At the same time, the demand for 'timely delivery' of goods has been growing day by day. According to Accenture's report 'Focusing on the Post-95 Consumer Group in China,' over 50% of post-95s hope to receive their purchases on the same day and are also willing to pay extra for faster delivery.

But achieving 'more, faster, better, and cheaper' in supermarket categories, which are non-standard, low-margin, and high-loss, is nothing short of an 'impossible quadrilateral,' and this has become an opportunity for large companies to enter the supermarket retail market.

On one hand, unlike categories such as apparel or 3C products, supermarket categories have low gross profit margins. Delving into the source and leveraging scale effects are the only two ways to increase profit margins, but these are precisely the barriers that traditional retail finds hardest to overcome.

However, large companies have a scale of traffic that traditional supermarkets cannot match. They can push prices to the limit through models such as direct supply from origins and product outsourcing, giving them a competitive advantage in user base and traffic costs.

On the other hand, meeting the fulfillment needs of so many SKUs also puts higher demands on the capabilities of warehousing and logistics infrastructure. Large companies, with their intelligent supply chain systems and dense fulfillment networks, are better able to find a balance between 'fast' and 'cheap.'

More importantly, this is not a 'temporary study session' by large companies to meet supermarket business needs. Instead, it is a moat built through years of continuous investment, which even well-funded competitors would find difficult to simply replicate in the short term, let alone surpass.

Moreover, major companies are still accelerating their investments in the retail sector.

Not long ago, Meituan fully acquired Dingdong for about 5 billion yuan, not only filling the business gap in the East China region but also obtaining Dingdong's core capabilities in the fresh food supply chain and more than 1,000 high-quality warehouses.

Pinduoduo, which just launched the 'Billion-Dollar Supermarket' channel, has also quietly rolled out the 'Shared Warehouse' logistics service. By cooperating with third-party warehousing and distribution service providers, they are gradually upgrading delivery services that originally took 2-3 days to next-day or the day after next delivery.

JD.com is now taking proactive action. Its 'Billion-Dollar Supermarket' not only includes self-operated products from JD and JD X, but also products from third-party stores, supplementing more differentiated products mainly with white-label items beyond the self-operated model, proving that high quality can also come at low prices.

As major companies continue to 'go deeper and heavier' in the retail sector, their entire set of supply chain, warehousing and logistics, and instant delivery capabilities will continue to 'grow bigger and bigger,' penetrating the entire broader retail market.

An ultimate battle over the entry point into daily life is on the verge of breaking out.

3. First 'Plant the Flag,' Then 'Counterattack'

Over the past year, the strategies and movements of major companies in the retail sector have been quite similar.

Alibaba and JD.com entered the food delivery market at the same time; Meituan, on one hand, fought back, while also partnering with JD.com to expand into offline supermarkets; before the smoke had even cleared in the instant retail market, Pinduoduo also began focusing on delivery efficiency.

Behind the similar strategies of these major companies is the goal of "taking initiative." In the current reshaping of the retail landscape by the food delivery battle, the boundaries of retail are becoming increasingly blurred. No giant is willing to remain in one corner; expansion is the only way to survive.

The major companies each have different core strengths, which means that while they compete for market share, they also need to simultaneously address their weaknesses-'planting flags' in areas where their competitors are stronger, and while capturing the users' mindset, using a 'fight to fight' strategy to gain more time for themselves.

From this perspective, JD.com's expansion into the 10-billion-yuan supermarket channel and offline discount supermarkets is not only aimed at further capturing users' everyday consumption touchpoints but also at reinforcing its own moat.

With a three-year subsidy of 20 billion yuan, JD.com aims to change users' entrenched perception that 'high quality inevitably means high prices,' turning the '10-billion subsidy' from a marketing gimmick into a part of the brand's mindset, allowing JD.com to solidify its position in a wider range of everyday consumer scenarios.

However, subsidies are nothing new. The real test comes when the subsidies fade-will users stay? This is not only a challenge for JD.com but also for Alibaba, Meituan, and Pinduoduo.

Simple as daily necessities may seem, they conceal the harshest business logic. The e-commerce landscape in 2026 will no longer be a simple price war but a comprehensive game involving supply chains, fulfillment efficiency, and user mindset.

Whoever can retain users in their daily three meals will have the opportunity to reshape the entire e-commerce industry.

However, if these giants want to broaden their boundaries, they must either break through user segments or enter someone else's ecosystem. In the obvious existing market, the latter is a more direct way to break the stalemate.

Thus, JD.com, which has almost no presence in the food delivery market, was the first to launch into the food delivery battle, attempting to seize a voice in the instant retail market; Meituan, which has the mindset of instant retail but has always been "delivering for others," filled its supply chain gaps through the acquisition of Dingdong; Taobao Flash Sale, which already has accumulations in supply chain and fulfillment capabilities, also invests heavily to win user perception.