At present, Wanda Group runs the country's largest network of shopping malls, which incorporate entertainment facilities such as movie theaters. At a press release, Wanda said it expects to attract over 1.5 billion customers to its Wanda plazas, hotels and resorts in 2014, strengthening its position as China's largest offline commerce platform. Wanda estimates that its properties will draw in over 5 billion consumers each year by 2020, making it the world's largest offline commerce platform.

"I estimate Wanda E-Commerce may be ready to do business as soon as next year, since our data center and payment system are already in development," said Wang, adding that the total investment in Wanda E-Commerce will total 20 billion yuan ($3.26 billion) over the next five years, and new investors will also be introduced.

At the press release, Wanda stated the three companies will cooperate closely to develop payment and e-commerce financial products, build a universal customer loyalty program, integrate big data and products, etc.

Wanda E-Commerce aims to launch e-commerce services in all 107 Wanda plazas, including those yet to open this year, by the end of 2014. By the following year, all of Wanda's plazas, hotels and resorts will be equipped with e-commerce services, said Dong Ce, CEO of Wanda E-Commerce, predicting that the Wanda e-commerce membership program will have more than 40 million members this year and is expected to increase to over 100 million next year.

Wanda E-Commerce will also seek to develop a series of innovative online financial products through direct collaboration with Wanda Group's financial arm, according to Dong.

Challenge for Alibaba?

Ma made clear his stance at the signing ceremony for the joint venture. "I guess the word 'e-commerce' may mislead some industrial insiders, who may think this is an alliance of three magnates to launch a new round of attempts to dominate the e-commerce sector. This is wrong, as it fails to seize the essence of the trend," he said.

However, this action is still regarded by some industrial insiders as a challenge to the dominance of Alibaba, China's biggest e-commerce operator.

Chen Xi, General Manager of the RET Rui Yide Chinese Commercial Real Estate Research Center, said the reason Wanda chose Tencent and Baidu rather than Alibaba is that both Alibaba and Wanda are experts at establishing platforms, so hypothetically, they would not be able to supplement each other in a joint venture. What Wanda sorely needs are users and greater capability in data processing.

According to Chen, Tencent's social platforms have the largest number of users in China, while Baidu is at the cutting-edge in big data processing, therefore, their collective experience in searching, maps and group buying can offer a much-needed helping hand to Wanda.

Wang once said that Alibaba business-to-customer platform Tmall is "Wanda online," and that the target customers of the two platforms are the same. Therefore some analysts think Alibaba represents Wanda's most potent rival for the O2O crown.

Wang Xiaoxing, an analyst with Analysts International, claimed Wanda E-Commerce's O2O business model shows a lot of promise. He said that what Wanda intends to do is to build is an O2O model based on its commercial real estate, an approach different to the traditional e-commerce model. Thus, he maintained the business will exert limited influence on the conventional e-commerce market.

It will be unlikely that the O2O business of Wanda will be able to compete toe-to-toe with Alibaba's B2C and customer-to-customer (C2C) platforms, and more competition will be seen in the supporting businesses.

Wanda, founded in 1988, operates in four major areas—commercial property, luxury hotels, culture and tourism, and department stores. In 2013, the company's assets totaled 380 billion yuan ($61.99 billion), its annual income reached 186.6 billion yuan ($30.44 billion) and net profits exceeded 12.5 billion yuan ($2.04 billion). Wanda Commercial Properties is a forerunner in the field of commercial real estate. Currently, there are 95 Wanda plazas across China, ranking second in the world in terms of total floor space.

Tencent, founded in November 1998, has grown into one of China's largest and most widely used Internet service portals. The company is providing value-added Internet, mobile and telecom services and online advertising under the strategic goal of providing users with "one-stop online lifestyle services."

As of the second quarter of 2014, the number of active user accounts for the company's QQ instant messenger has amounted to 829 million while that of peak concurrent users has reached 206 million. The number of its active WeChat users is 438 million in total.

Baidu, founded in 2000, is the leading Chinese-language Internet search provider. In addition to its core Web search product, it powers many popular community-based products, such as Baidu PostBar, the world's first and largest Chinese-language query-based searchable online community platform, Baidu Knows, the world's largest Chinese-language interactive knowledge-sharing platform, and Baidu Encyclopedia, the world's largest user-generated Chinese-language encyclopedia. The company also offers dozens of helpful vertical search-based products, such as Maps, Image Search, Video Search and News Search.

(Source: Companies' websites)

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