Since Suning wants its place in the Chinese retail market to emulate the broad appeal of a Wal-Mart rather than the specialization of a Best Buy, it has tried to expand its categories both by making acquisitions and by establishing its open platform in July this year for sellers from various industries to distribute their products.
But Liu said that newcomers like Suning and 360buy.com can hardly compete with Alibaba's competitive edge in logistics costs and online payment.
In 2010, leading e-commerce company Alibaba became the first in China to start a microfinance business, Alibaba told the Global Times via e-mail Thursday, providing loans to members based either on their credit or on their purchase orders, usually up to 1 million yuan to be paid back within three months or less.
By the end of June 2012, Alibaba had extended more than 26 billion yuan to its 129,000 members.
It is a necessary step for B2C companies to establish a full supply chain including sales, logistics and financing services if they want to stay competitive, Feng Lin, an e-commerce researcher at Hangzhou-based China e-Business Research Center, told the Global Times Thursday.
B2C firms now compete both for consumers and for sellers, Feng said, but he expressed his doubts that microcredit will effectively help e-commerce firms win over sellers, because the annual interest rate is always high.
'Devil' foreign instructors at Chinese bodyguard training camp
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