In the Zhejiang Province there is a mountain village of 2,000 people where a Taobao Village shop is up and running as part of Alibabas new 1,000 counties and 10,000 villages program, asia.nikkei.com reports. Villagers can purchase their daily necessities at the shop.
Farmers usually purchase seeds and other agricultural products. The plan is to open Taobao Village shops in various rural communities across China, where more than 600 million potential new customers live. Alibaba is also venturing into the urban area with a marketing campaign for Alipay, which allows shoppers to pay for purchases via their smartphones.
Smartphone users can also use Alibaba chat, social network and other apps to discover popular restaurants and other businesses. Then they can choose to pay for their purchases with Alipay. For participating restaurants and other merchants, the online payment platform could help them bring in new customers.
With these new rural and urban advances, Alibaba is embracing also the brick-and-mortar economy, where more than USD 4 trillion worth of transactions take place every year -- worth nearly 10 times more than those made in Chinas online economy.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now