JD.com, a Chinese retailer, is planning a major expansion of its brick-and-mortar stores, aiming to build 5 million in the next three years, as Chinese e-commerce companies step up competition for consumers in smaller Chinese cities. Xu Lei, CEO of JD Retail, said the company has realized that China's retail market is huge, and because of the limitations of JD's current business model, he wants JD to set up its own offline stores and work with existing players. JD.com's move highlights the growing competition among China's leading e-commerce retailers and its desire to attract more consumers from smaller Chinese cities. JD.com's biggest competitor, Alibaba, recently bought a 19.9% stake in Suning in an effort to increase its market share in smaller Chinese cities. Small cities are important not only for Internet-based merchants but also for traditional retailers in the world's second-largest economy. Xu mentioned that consumers in fourth-tier to sixth-tier cities now find that when they want to buy big-brand products, they either cannot find them locally or the products are sold at higher prices than those in the next tier cities. What JD is trying to do is to provide low-end consumers with the same access to products and prices through its nationwide logistics network. In the future, the company also plans to work with popular brands to tailor products from one region to another. So far, sales orders from the low-end market have increased more than 100%, according to JD.com.