Alibaba and Douyin Partner In Strategic Move to Dominate China's Midyear Shopping Craze

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s BABA Taobao and Tmall Group are collaborating with ByteDance-owned Douyin to draw users from the Chinese short video platform, aiming to boost their presence in the mainland’s annual midyear shopping festival. 

Recently, Alibaba’s domestic e-commerce unit teamed up with Douyin, also known as the Chinese version of TikTok, to assist merchants on the Taobao and Tmall platforms in gaining customers from Douyin’s user base. 

The collaboration revealed on Monday, introduced the “Star Cube Plan,” a joint initiative by Alibaba’s digital marketing platform Alimama and Douyin’s marketing tool Xingtu, SCMP reports. 

This plan facilitates marketing on Douyin and transactions on Taobao, allowing merchants to advertise on Douyin and track user engagement and purchases on Taobao and Tmall.

Alibaba has previously established partnerships with over 200 online platforms, including a notable agreement with Tencent Holdings to link WeChat’s Channels to Taobao and Tmall shops.

Ahead of China’s second-largest online sales event, the 618 shopping festival, Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group are implementing several strategies to boost merchant and consumer participation. 

The group has allocated over 200 billion yuan for a rapid settlement program to aid merchants, particularly small and medium enterprises, and has joined forces with Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao and fintech affiliate Ant Group to offer logistics subsidies and shipping insurance deals.

Prior reports indicated Alibaba leveraging artificial intelligence to boost its e-commerce moat in China. Wenwen chatbot on Alibaba’s Taobao platform provides personalized shopping recommendations. 

Alibaba also tapped generative AI to simplify tasks like photo editing and virtual model creation. 

CEO Eddie Wu reported double-digit growth in gross merchandise value for Taobao and Tmall platforms in the year’s first quarter. Analysts attributed Alibaba’s double-digit year-on-year growth in GMV to discounts.

BABA stock has gained over 18% year-to-date. Investors can gain exposure to the stock via Invesco Golden Dragon China ETF PGJ and ProShares Online Retail ETF ONLN.

Price Action: BABA shares traded lower by 2.06% at $86.46 premarket at the last check on Tuesday.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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