OFweekRobotMany online retailers around the world have developed express drones and plan to provide drone home delivery services. JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce website, is also developing drones. A few days ago, Liu Qiangdong (Weibo), head of JD.com, said in an interview with foreign media that drone delivery can greatly reduce the cost of delivery in rural areas and develop rural online shopping. He also introduced JD.com’s future rural logistics model. , each of the villages will have a JD courier to receive the drones.
A few days ago, Liu Qiangdong accepted an exclusive interview with CNBC, an American financial news website. Liu Qiangdong said that drone delivery can allow e-commerce companies, including JD.com, to provide services in remote rural areas, which used to have relatively high express and transportation costs.
Liu Qiangdong said: “Today, we employ 70,000 couriers in the streets, you know this is a high cost, if you can use robots (drones) to deliver packages, this cost will be very low. “
Liu Qiangdong said that because of logistics costs, it was difficult to do e-commerce business in rural areas in the past, but drones have brought new opportunities. He said delivery drones could fly out of cities to deliver packages to rural areas, and e-commerce companies would not need to use cars or vans, which would reduce costs.
Liu Qiangdong said that after the promotion of drone delivery, logistics costs in rural areas can be reduced by 70%, and JD.com’s financial statements will be profitable by then.
China’s e-commerce market is developing rapidly. JD.com and Alibaba have become two giants in China’s e-commerce market. In many first-, second-, and third-tier cities, online shopping has become very popular, and express delivery companies have also built mature service networks. Today, e-commerce companies are expanding into smaller cities, counties and rural areas, but at this time, express delivery networks and delivery costs have become an obstacle to development.
As we all know, the transportation in rural areas is inconvenient, the scale of shopping is temporarily limited, and express delivery companies are reluctant to build express delivery networks. Currently, in remote areas of China, state-run postal companies are able to provide delivery services, but this service has a poor user experience and takes too long.
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According to a report by consulting firm McKinsey, the size of the global express delivery market has reached nearly 80 billion US dollars last year, of which China, Germany and the United States account for 40% of the market, and the e-commerce market has become the largest driver of the express delivery market.
The report also pointed out that in the express service network, the last mile has become the most expensive delivery link, accounting for almost half of the total cost. And the service performance in this last mile has also become a factor in consumers’ evaluation of e-commerce services.
Alibaba’s online shopping platform does not operate express delivery services, but provides package delivery services through third-party express companies. However, JD.com is unique in that it has built an independent express delivery team, and the user evaluation of express delivery services is better. At that time, Liu Qiangdong fought against the public opinion and invested in the construction of express delivery network. Such investment is now becoming the competitive advantage of JD.com in China’s e-commerce market.
Due to issues such as employee treatment and assessment mechanisms, the service quality of Chinese express companies has shown signs of decline. Many consumers have complained that some express companies no longer deliver packages to their homes, but forcibly “throw them” into third-party packages to be received. goods outlets, and then send a notification text message to the consumer.
In public before, Liu Qiangdong also said that JD.com’s shopping experience includes the level of express delivery services, which is currently at the leading level in the industry.
How will JD.com use drones to promote online shopping markets in rural areas in the future? Liu Qiangdong gave a detailed introduction to foreign media. He said that in each village, JD.com will have a courier stationed in the village. He lives and works in this village and has a backyard. He will become a small delivery center of JD.com in that village. JD.com will use the unmanned service. Machines send packages to this backyard, and such point-to-point transportation routes will be fixed.
At present, public opinion is worried that with the popularization of robots, drones, and artificial intelligence, whether machines will take away jobs that belong to humans. Liu Qiangdong also talked about this topic. He said that robots or drones will not affect the employment of Jingdong employees, and many people will still have their own positions.
Liu Qiangdong said: “We still need many people to manage the delivery drones, such as using cameras, observing and operating delivery drones, and managing unmanned warehouses and related order robots.”
Liu Qiangdong also said that if we look at the level of the whole society and the whole country, robots will make some people lose their jobs.
Liu Qiangdong predicted that robots or drones will bring a revolution to the retail industry in the next five years. In addition, in the next decade, some technologies will gradually mature, and the overall technological development will also accelerate.
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