Alibaba, JD.com To Offer Consumer Shopping Data To Retailers

Through an Alibaba Group Holding Ltd program that offers years of shopping history for consumers, Bestore Co Ltd intends to connect technology for facial recognition with the online retailer’s account data.

Assistants in the snack food chain’s stores will have the ability to see the food preferences of customers that decide to have their facial data in the systems of Bestore, Reuters reported.

As it stands, Bestore provides shoppers with the option of using face-scanning tablets from Alibaba to pay. Now, it has begun to tap into other offerings from the eCommerce retailer for marketing. For instance, Bestore can serve an ad that offers recommendations for Bestore snacks for a spring holiday road trip for a consumer who owns a sports utility vehicle, enjoys food that is salty and likely has a family.

Bestore Head of eCommerce Huang Xiao said, according to the report, “With the partnership, our strategies are more focused, sales behaviors are more targeted and resources are better allocated.” Beyond shopping history through the program, which is dubbed A100, Alibaba also can provide retail clients with the DingTalk chat app to communicate with shoppers internally as well as ‘heat maps’ for the movement of shoppers. And JD.com “provides similar services to Alibaba,” per reports, and reportedly helped a diaper brand find out why Chinese rivals were becoming more popular.

Alibaba, https://t.co/ekQIZX4ydl To Offer Consumer Shopping Data To Retailers https://t.co/8U0TCix60k #Retailers #retailershoes #retailerswanted #retailershop #retailersmarket pic.twitter.com/ZKrMcPNIJz

— PYMNTS (@pymnts) June 20, 2019

The news comes as Alibaba Group announced in January the launch of A100. Through a press release at the time, the Chinese eCommerce firm said members of A100 will gain access to Alibaba businesses to make digital offerings together.

Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang said in the release, “With over 600 million monthly active users and nearly 30 business units specializing in enterprise services including tech-driven retail, mobile payment, digital marketing, media entertainment, IT infrastructure and more, Alibaba is the leading partner for businesses within China and around the world to capitalize on the growing consumption by China’s middle class.”

Zhang continued at the time, “The A100 initiative, powered by the Alibaba Operating System, will be a one-stop shop for businesses to access a comprehensive range of enterprise services in the digital era.”