Alibaba teams up with BMW dealership on O2O venture
Alliance with Hong Kong-listed China Greenland Rundong Auto will offer mainland sales and financing service for luxury cars
E-commerce powerhouse Alibaba is teaming up with Hong Kong-listed China Greenland Rundong Auto to develop an online-to-offline (O2O) sales and financing service for the mainland’s growing luxury car market.
Shanghai-based Greenland Rundong, one of the largest BMW car dealers in China, said in a regulatory filing late on Monday that it had entered into a strategic cooperation deal with the Alibaba Automobile business unit of Zhejiang Tmall.com Technology, which is part of the larger Alibaba organisation.
“Greenland Rundong and Alibaba Automobile will build up an O2O automobile service ecosphere, with the Yangtze River Delta as its core location of business,” Yang Peng, the chairman and president of Greenland Rundong, said.
Yang said he expected the partnership would help Greenland Rundong integrate its traditional sales and after-sales business with “a high-quality online car purchase and maintenance service experience to consumers”.
O2O centres on connecting people with local services. This includes bringing customers to retail outlets
Their alliance marks the latest in a series of O2O initiatives being undertaken by China‘s major internet companies, led by Alibaba, Tencent and online search giant Baidu.