As the peak consumption season approaches at the end of the year, JD.com's 7FRESH has suddenly initiated a price war.

On November 1, JD.com announced the integration of 7FRESH and its dark stores, while simultaneously launching the "Blowout Price" initiative, claiming "truly affordable, no need to compare," with a strong rivalry aimed at Hema, Dingdong Maicai, and others; 15 days later, 7FRESH announced that products under the "Blowout Price" initiative would be 10% cheaper on average compared to other instant retail platforms.

In terms of discount intensity, some 7FRESH products indeed offer the lowest prices among major retail platforms; for example, 500 grams of live grass shrimp are priced at 19.9 yuan at JD.com's 7FRESH, while they cost 25.8 yuan at Hema and 27.8 yuan at Little Elephant Supermarket; a pack of six bottles of 330ml Coca-Cola costs 9.9 yuan per set at JD.com's 7FRESH, compared to 10.9 yuan per set at both Hema and Little Elephant Supermarket.

Compared to membership supermarkets, JD.com's 7FRESH offers Earl Grey Swiss Rolls at 26.9 yuan for 8 pieces, with a unit price lower than Sam's Club's 59.8 yuan for 16 pieces, and a total price also lower than Hema's.

Overall, JD.com's 7FRESH price war focuses on popular categories such as fresh produce and fast-moving consumer goods, as well as popular private-label products on various platforms (like Swiss Rolls); strategically, this price war is highly publicized, and competitors have quickly responded, with Little Elephant Supermarket adjusting prices in three rounds within 72 hours after the launch of the "Blowout Price" initiative, with nearly 300 products reduced in price.

However, internally, this price war initiated by 7FRESH has been in the making for quite some time.

In the years 2022-2023, "same-city business" was a must-win battle for JD.com Retail each year; this year, JD.com has specified it as "instant retail," hoping to establish a foundation in the instant retail sector, which offers significant market value, leveraging JD.com's logistics capabilities, product capabilities, and traffic operation capabilities.

The "Development Report on the Instant Retail Industry" released by the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation shows that the instant retail industry maintains rapid growth, with China's instant retail market reaching 650 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 28.89%, and is expected to exceed 2 trillion yuan by 2030.

The market is large enough, and the entire instant retail industry is still in its early stages, with numerous opportunities. In terms of categories, there are dark stores focused on fresh produce, as well as hourly delivery and online supermarkets centered on fast-moving consumer goods. In other words, the market is large enough to accommodate platform-level players like Meituan, Taobao, Douyin, and others.

Naturally, this also includes JD.com.

Since last year, JD.com has been experimenting with dark stores and restarting community group-buying businesses, attempting to rediscover the connection between online and offline; this year, JD.com has continued to expand its offline presence, opening multiple JD MALLs, collaborating with Heilan Home to launch the first JD Outlet store, and the first discount store "Huaguan Discount Supermarket," aiming to expand offline supply.

In the new retail sector, JD.com and Alibaba have essentially initiated layouts simultaneously; in earlier years, the merger of JD Daojia and Dada, as well as the collaboration with Walmart, stocked JD.com's "ammunition depot" for instant retail. Today, a significant portion of JD Daojia's orders come from Sam's Club.

However, problems are equally prominent. "Boiling New Decade" once mentioned that JD.com can only achieve direct delivery for some products in some cities, with a relatively low proportion, essentially not changing the issues of scattered supply sources, low standardization, and varying service levels.

Specifically looking at the protagonist of this price war, 7FRESH Supermarket, although it was established in 2017 and opened its first store in 2018, according to relevant media statistics from June 2023, 7FRESH only had 64 stores nationwide; although new stores have since opened, after withdrawing from regional markets such as Changsha and Xi'an, the overall scale has still not exceeded 100 stores.

In JD.com's 7FRESH press release, the expression for Blowout Prices is to vigorously promote direct supply from sources and shorten the distribution chain to achieve lower prices; however, it needs to be clarified that when retailers lack scale and store sales, "optimizing redundancies and circulation costs in intermediate links to create price space" is more of a presentation of short-term performance needs and is not sustainable.

If 7FRESH and JD.com's self-operated business share a supply chain procurement system, it might be understandable; another possibility is that "Blowout Prices" are primarily the result of short-term price subsidies, which tests 7FRESH's financial strength and strategic resolve.

Regarding strategic resolve, why hasn't the number of 7FRESH stores exceeded 100 in seven years since its establishment? This is influenced by factors such as the sudden impact of the pandemic, the lack of innovative highlights in store models, and the strategic sway caused by "three leadership changes in seven years."

From 2017 to the present, from Wang Xiaosong to Wang Jing and then to Zheng Feng, 7FRESH has had three leaders, and its department has undergone multiple adjustments amid turmoil; last year, 7FRESH, Pinpin, and other businesses were merged into an independent department under the responsibility of Yan Xiaobing, who directly reports to Xu Ran, CEO of JD.com Group.

If "Blowout Prices" fail to bring sustained results, will 7FRESH enter another "leadership change cycle," which will be a significant challenge to brand strategic resolve.

Beyond physical retail, with businesses like 7FRESH, the instant retail sector where JD.com intends to exert effort is even more competitive.

Briefly enumerating, in the third quarter of this year, Dingdong Maicai's average daily order volume reached 1,700 in Shanghai and exceeded 1,000 in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions; Little Elephant Supermarket opened 680 new dark stores in the second quarter of this year, while the number of Meituan Flash Stores exceeded 30,000; Hema restarted its dark store business in August this year; Walmart's fiscal second-quarter report for 2025 shows that the penetration rate of its e-commerce business in China reached 49%, primarily driven by Sam's Club's e-commerce and dark store business.

Although the opportunities and potential of the instant retail market are sufficiently large, regional and consumer group differentiation has already emerged; for example, consumers in East China tend to use Dingdong Maicai more frequently, while Little Elephant Supermarket has a relative advantage in North and South China; furthermore, middle-class families in first-tier cities prefer shopping at Sam's Club or ordering Sam's Club products online.

In such a segmented and partially defined market space, what can JD.com rely on to establish a foothold? 3C and home appliances are JD.com's advantageous categories, but stores like Xiaomi Home and Apple's official flagship store have successively entered platforms like Meituan and Ele.me; in particular, to match the home delivery of home appliances, Meituan Instant Shopping has specifically launched a four-wheeled electric vehicle fulfillment service.

The crux lies in the fact that JD.com's roots are online, with limited interaction between its offline business and online capabilities; there are still breakpoints between the celestial and terrestrial networks, lacking continuity; however, based on its long-term cultivation of the takeout business, Meituan has solidly accumulated strength in fulfillment, traffic, and merchant operations.

Taking merchant supply as an example, through Instant Shopping, Flash Stores, and other platforms, Meituan has concentrated a large number of small and medium-sized stores on its platform, enriching its supply and constituting the basic disk of offline entities; however, JD.com's hourly delivery merchants are still primarily brand chains, with insufficient coverage density and a considerable gap in service experience.

One step behind leads to steps behind.

Around 2016, Xu Xin of Capital Today once stated, "If we can capture high-frequency supermarkets and then fresh produce, online retail has the potential to achieve the 50% share that Ma Yun mentioned (the proportion of e-commerce in overall retail consumption)." JD.com is continuing to make efforts in this direction.

Relying on years of accumulation, JD.com can secure a place in instant retail, but the size of that place, the share after differentiation, whether the strategy will sway, and whether there will be overlap and constraints among various businesses are still unknowns; for example, the dark stores piloted last year merged with 7FRESH this year, raising questions about whether their categories will expand and differentiate, and whether their service and fulfillment efficiency can improve.

Whose prices can 7FRESH's "Blowout Prices" truly "blow out"? And for how long can they last?