Merger Meituan & Dazhongdianping eyes to foster China's Internet Plus Strategy by putting up an e-commerce training university. (Photo : Getty Images)
China has been seeing more global traditional retailers expanding into the country's fierce e-commerce sector, the Global Times reported.
The news comes after Metro, a German retail giant, announced its plans to accelerate its transition to digital in China's mainland market.
Metro China President Joreon de Groot acknowledged during the firm's 20th anniversary in China that Chinese firms like Alibaba Group Holding occupy a large share in the e-commerce sector. Nonetheless, he noted that the company is intensifying its efforts to improve its online platforms to deliver more products to Chinese consumers.
Currently, Metro China has 82 stores in 57 Chinese cities. It has over 4.3 million registered members. In 2015, it has expanded its channel by launching an online store on Alibaba's Tmall Global platform.
Metro China is also tapping into the great potential of Chinese consumer market by developing its business-to-consumer (B2C) business, the Global Times reported.
"Metro Group has always welcomed individual customers," Cao Yong, Metro Jinjiang Cash & Carry Co.'s corporate communications chief, told the Global Times.
Apart from Metro, other traditional retailers have also expressed plans to seek digital triumph in the lucrative Chinese market.
Back in July 2015, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said that it has fully acquired yhd.com, a Shanghai-headquartered online supermarket. In an official statement, the firm hopes it could use the site's "local experience" and combine it with its global sourcing and supply chain to deliver better services to the Chinese market.
Meanwhile, French retailer Carrefour China Inc. has also launched its own Chinese e-commerce portal in 2015. In the latter part of last year, it also unveiled a mobile shopping app, expanding its services to the online-to-offline business.
For Jing Linbo, director of the Chinese Evaluation Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, "these international traditional retailers have no choice but to expand into the e-commerce market, as the online retail business is growing so fast in China."
Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics in January shows that online retail consumption increased by 33.3 percent year-on-year to 3.88 trillion yuan in 2015.
Additionally, the total retail sales increased by 10.7 percent to 30 trillion yuan in 2015.
