This year, JD.com’s 618 promotion campaign stretches up to 46 days. On the logistics side, frontline delivery staff are required to report for duty between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m., while procurement, sales, and customer service operations personnel are told they cannot leave before 11:00 p.m. However, according to reports from TMTPOST, multiple frontline couriers reported that the actual order volume on June 18 itself did not show a clear spike. In some areas, the daily order count was only slightly over 100, on par with ordinary days. A courier in Zhejiang said this year’s order volume was about 40% lower than the same period last year. At the same time, performance evaluation pressure has increased, with a single non-standard operation risking a fine of up to 100 yuan and losing 25 points. The internal forum has seen a surge of complaint posts from frontline staff regarding signature receipt requirements and penalty standards. Looking at third-party data, the Fudan Consumer Big Data Lab reports that the total online retail sales during this year’s 618 period grew by approximately 3.2% year-on-year. Combined with Douyin, JD.com has further narrowed the gap with Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao.
Financial pressure is even more pronounced. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, JD.com reported revenue of 315.7 billion yuan, up 4.9% year-on-year, but net profit attributable to shareholders was only 5.1 billion yuan, a roughly 53% decline from 10.9 billion yuan in the same period last year — marking a five-year low for quarterly profit. Marketing expenses surged 45.8% year-on-year, while revenue from consumer electronics and appliances declined by 8.4%. The new business segment (including food delivery, JD Property, Jingxi, and overseas operations) posted an operating loss of 10.3 billion yuan in the first quarter, expanding from 1.3 billion yuan in the same period last year, with an operating loss margin of 164.9%. Cumulative losses from Q2 2025 to Q1 2026 reached 55.7 billion yuan. Additionally, in April this year, JD.com was fined and ordered to disgorge about 635 million yuan by the State Administration for Market Regulation due to compliance issues in merchant qualification checks on its food delivery platform. Pressure also continues on merchants: one apparel merchant revealed that a product costing 120 yuan to produce only nets about 80 yuan after sale — the popular sentiment is that “the more you sell, the more you lose.”