JD.com Makes Acquisition Offer to European Consumer Electronics Retailer CECONOMY

On July 31, Chinese self-operated e-commerce enterprises JD.com issued an announcement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, stating that it will acquire Germany’s largest consumer electronics group CECONOMY through its wholly-owned indirect subsidiary, with a valuation of approximately EUR 2.2 billion (equivalent to over CNY 18 billion).

CECONOMY is a leading German consumer electronics retailer founded in 2017. It was formerly the consumer electronics business segment of German retail giant Metro AG and became an independent company after being spun off and listed in 2017. Currently, the group operates over 1,000 stores in 12 European countries. Its core brands MediaMarkt and Saturn hold a market share of over 30% in Germany, and it has built a comprehensive retail ecosystem through its after-sales service brand Deutsche Technikberatung. However, with the rise of e-commerce platforms like Amazon, CECONOMY, which focuses on offline retail, has faced certain impacts. Despite its active promotion of digital transformation and launch of online platforms, its market share has failed to replicate the strong performance it achieved during the era of physical stores.

For this acquisition, JD.com’s main goal is to leverage CECONOMY’s mature offline channel network to bypass Europe’s complex distribution system, quickly enter the European retail market, and exchange capital for time and space for market expansion. Previously, Liu Qiangdong, founder of JD.com, stated that the European infrastructure JD.com has been building for three years will be completed by the end of this year and officially put into operation in 2026. It is reported that JD.com will adopt a model of “local e-commerce, local teams, local procurement, and local delivery” in Europe. Currently, it has already provided “one-hour delivery” services in the Netherlands, Poland and other countries. Obviously, JD.com’s overseas expansion path differs from that of companies like Temu and Shein, which adopt a light-asset platform-based expansion model and rely on traffic and algorithms to develop markets. Instead, JD.com has chosen a combination of self-built infrastructure and local mergers and acquisitions, investing more assets overseas and building competitive barriers through the offline “experience + service” model to avoid simple and unsustainable price wars.

In addition, CECONOMY’s stores and warehouses can serve as “front warehouses” for JD.com’s e-commerce business, complementing JD.com’s international supply chain and alleviating issues such as slow cross-border logistics and high costs. By integrating CECONOMY’s physical retail network, JD.com is expected to build an online-offline collaborative system and further strengthen its local supply chain capabilities.

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