JD.com sets its sights on Dianping, the three giants battle in local life

Author | Wang Xiaojun

Editor | Huang Yu

Following Alibaba's "Amap Street Ranking," JD.com has finally taken action against Dianping.

Recently, JD.com quietly launched the "JD Review" feature within its app. This section is currently placed in the "Instant Delivery" channel and includes five core categories: finding food, booking hotels, selecting good products, choosing places to play, and picking home services.

JD.com responded that this feature is currently in the testing phase and is randomly open to some users in certain cities, with no commercialization plans at this time.

From the current presentation, JD Review is not just a simple review function but a comprehensive lifestyle service content community. Its page adopts a dual waterfall flow information display format, similar to content communities like Xiaohongshu, emphasizing "planting grass."

Users can share review content and directly jump to shopping links. The platform also integrates evaluation information from related stores, and JD.com will set topics to guide content creation.

Essentially, JD Review also combines with existing businesses to become a new traffic entry point, forming a consumption chain from "content planting grass" to "immediate conversion."

Specifically, restaurant exploration notes are directly linked to the JD takeaway ordering entrance, allowing users to place orders directly if interested; while the content for digital products can be one-click redirected to JD's self-operated store for purchase, achieving a seamless connection between lifestyle service content and e-commerce consumption.

At the same time, four major feature rankings were launched alongside JD Review, covering areas such as takeaway, hotels, attractions, and shopping. It is understood that these rankings are generated based on JD's hundreds of millions of product data and user consumption behavior, integrating multiple indicators such as sales volume, positive reviews, and repurchase rates.

From an overall business layout perspective, the launch of JD Review is a strategic part of JD's expansion into the local lifestyle service landscape.

Since the beginning of this year, JD.com has frequently made moves in the local lifestyle sector, with its entry into takeaway directly triggering the most intense "takeaway war" in the internet sector in recent years. Subsequently, JD.com also made a high-profile entry into the hotel and travel business. These are all important segments of local life.

From a strategic perspective, JD Review is an important layout for JD in the local lifestyle service sector, with the core intention of building a closed-loop ecosystem of "content planting grass + immediate consumption," while also serving as a strategic defense against competition from platforms like Meituan and Alibaba.

After entering the takeaway business, JD.com has also tasted the benefits of high-frequency businesses driving low-frequency businesses. According to JD executives at an earnings conference, the e-commerce conversion rate for early takeaway new users has approached 50%, and the shopping frequency for categories such as supermarkets and lifestyle services has also significantly increased.

From the latest financial report, although new businesses are still in a high investment phase, JD's overall revenue has maintained double-digit growth. This is particularly challenging as everyone is looking for growth.

With the launch of JD Review, the competitive landscape of the local lifestyle service market is shifting from a confrontation between Meituan and Alibaba to a three-way melee. Previously, Alibaba launched the "Amap Street Ranking" in September this year, building an offline service evaluation system through "user behavior + credit." Dazhong Dianping also announced that it will invest at least 3 billion yuan over the next five years to upgrade the "local life information infrastructure."

Under the pressure of peak user growth, enhancing the activity and consumption frequency of existing users through local life services has become an inevitable choice for the platform. According to relevant reports, by 2025, the instant retail market size is expected to exceed 1.5 trillion yuan, becoming the largest increment in the e-commerce sector.

The "30-minute living circle" that major platforms are competing for has become a new focus of e-commerce competition. Local life services not only signify a huge market size but also serve as an entry point for high-frequency consumption scenarios.

High-frequency demand can effectively drive low-frequency transactions and enhance user stickiness, which is precisely what e-commerce platforms like JD.com, primarily focused on low-frequency consumption, urgently need.

In the overall competition of local life, Dazhong Dianping, which does not emphasize commercialization, is a unique presence. Currently, platform competition has shifted from extensive traffic grabbing to a refined reconstruction of user trust mechanisms, and a genuine evaluation system has become the new infrastructure of the local life industry.

Therefore, in the process of building reviews and rankings, authenticity has become a measure for the outside world.

In addition to JD.com's recent response, two other companies also stated that there are no commercialization plans for review-related businesses. During the release of the must-eat list by Dazhong Dianping in July this year, the marketing head Cheng Yueyue stated, "The Dazhong Dianping APP has no so-called commercialization goals or content related to business." Gaode Map CEO Guo Ning announced that the Gaode Street Scanning List will never be commercialized.

In terms of reviews, each company has its own development path, reflecting their respective advantages and characteristics.

Meituan, with years of accumulation, has rich merchant resources and a mature user mindset; Alibaba, leveraging Gaode's map services, has entered local recommendations related to geographic locations; while JD.com links numerous businesses together within one APP, creating a super supply chain, with reviews serving as a new traffic entry point.

From the actions of each company to improve the local life ecosystem, it is evident that there will be more intense competition in this field in the future.

After all, this area is also seen as a market with considerable growth potential. It is predicted that by 2030, China's instant retail market size is expected to exceed 2 trillion yuan.

For JD.com's reviews, the challenges cannot be ignored. In the restaurant review field, Dazhong Dianping has a strong user mindset and content ecosystem, and JD.com needs to cultivate the habit of users making consumption decisions through "JD Reviews."

Currently, although this layout is in the local life field, the competition among companies is no longer about specific businesses. Platform competition has shifted from overt price wars to deeper content ecosystems, service collaboration, and supply chain capability comparisons.

In the future, whether JD Reviews can find a differentiated breakthrough between Meituan's content moat and Alibaba's scenario advantages will depend on its ability to build unique user value, especially in establishing consumer recognition in vertical fields such as home services and hospitality.

At present, a new battlefield with familiar opponents, a new round of fierce battles in local life may soon begin