Alibaba and Unilever sign strategic partnership agreement

Alibaba Group said on Sunday that it has signed an agreement with packaged goods company Unilever NV to make a sustained outreach to garner more consumers in China. “Key areas of collaboration include rural China penetration, cross-border e-commerce, consumer protection, and Big Data“. Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang said the company looks forward to taking its partnership with Unilever to the next level. Alibaba is committed towards providing a higher value to the merchant on a continuous basis and providing better shopping experiences to its shoppers. “Its mission is to make it easy to do business everywhere, and its vision is to build the future infrastructure of commerce”.

“Alibaba is the leading internet company in China, with the most innovative thinking”. It is not just an online store, but also offers a solution platform for e-commerce logistics, e-finance and online payment.

Though Unilever garners more than 50% of its sales from emerging markets, sales from China have been soft in the recent months due to economic sluggishness in the world’s second-largest economy. The agreement is poised to help Unilever broaden its distribution channel, as a wide variety of its products will be marketed through Alibaba’s online marketing unit, Alimama.

However, despite Unilever’s online storefront presence on Tmall, as well as on Alibaba rival JD.com, it still felt the pain of the slowdown in China past year when sales for two consecutive quarters were down by 20 per cent. This led to bricks-and-mortar retailers and distributors destocking Unilever products.

China’s retail trends suggest that Unilever has been among several Western companies that have been feeling the pain of the shift of Chinese consumers to online shopping.

The companies will also collaborate further on tagging each Unilever product with unique QR codes to allow consumers to verify the product’s authenticity, Alibaba said in a statement.

Task adds this new arrangement will help Unilever fight back against a big problem in China-bogus goods.

The Unilever Week on TMall, set on July 22 to 24 will be the initial step introducing Unilever in the e-commerce website highlighting Unilever’s best-selling products. It opened a Tmall global fashion store in September 2014, using the bonded warehouse model and the free trade zone to sell into China.

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