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Web titans help merchants regain footing
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Chinese Internet platforms are making major efforts to help merchants recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
Alibaba’s lifestyle services unit set out to help an additional one million offline merchants and service providers fully leverage digital capabilities, because the epidemic dampened foot traffic and business sentiment.
“The epidemic has changed consumer behavior and business models; so we’re helping expedite the adoption of digital lifestyle services to allow businesses to rejuvenate as quarantine restrictions gradually lift,” said Wang Lei, president of Alibaba Local Services.
Currently around 3 million merchants connect with Alibaba consumers through the lifestyle service platform.
An increasing number of shoppers ordered daily necessities such as fresh food through delivery platforms during the outbreak, and many appreciated these digital services for their convenience.
In 2018, Alibaba merged on-demand delivery site Ele.me and lifestyle service unit Koubei to combine online and offline resources, as offline service is regarded as a crucial area of future competition with Tencent-backed lifestyle service site Meituan Dianping.
Delivery for grocery and supermarkets orders on Ele.me surged nearly 10 times in late January and early February while fresh food orders from wet markets jumped eight times.
A total of 200,000 new merchants have joined Ele.me’s delivery platform since the outbreak through an expedited scheme to set up online store fronts in several hours instead of several days.
Online training courses are expected to cover 10 million staff in the next three years.
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