Over the moon: JD.com garners more than 60% of online mooncake sales
A sales spike was observed from Sep 17, which was exactly a week before the actual day of mooncake festival.
It also snatched more than 60% of the online mooncake sales.
As compared to the same period last year, the number of product orders this year was 106% higher.
Quality customer experience such as making relevant recommendation, providing options of different prices were reasons for the site’s success, said Li Changming, the general manager of dried food and snacks, JD FMCG and Foods.
JD also claimed that the booming online sales was a stark contrast to the lacklustre performance of offline retail.
The success of online retail was also witnessed by rival Tmall, which held the mooncake super brand day between Sep 13 and Sep 15.
It claimed that on the first day of sales, 11,075,071 pieces of mooncakes were sold.
This translated to the sale of seven pieces of mooncakes per minute. The site was subsequently awarded with the Guinness Record for selling the most number of mooncakes on a single e-commerce site within 24 hours.
Most searched term: taste and flavour
Taste and flavour were the most searched terms for mooncake buyers, amounting to at least half of the searches, JD revealed.
Double yolk lotus seed paste, custard egg yolk, egg yolk lotus seed paste, five kernels, rose bean paste were the most popular flavours.
As for mooncakes with regional taste, Suzhou and Guangdong-styled flavours were preferred to Beijing and Yunnan-styled flavours.
International F&B brands
International F&B brands are also competing for a place in China’s mooncake business. These brands included Pizza Hut, McDonald’s and Oreo.
They have launched mooncakes featuring their ingredients used in their main F&B business, such as cheese and brownie chocolate.
Disney-themed mooncake designs were also highly sought after, according to JD.
For instance, sales of mooncakes which featured cartoon characters of “Despicable Me” grew by 42 as compared to the same period last year.
Unconventional flavours have sprouted in China’s mooncake manufacturing scene.
Many of them were savoury items, such as spicy duck meat, prawn and abalone.
