In brief
Vanke partnered with Baidu to explore location-based services and big data analysis to improve the customer experience. President Yu Liang stressed that traditional businesses must adapt to the internet age and treat customers better.
“Internet thinking” has recently been mentioned frequently by the management of many traditional businesses. Vanke, mainland China’s largest property developer, has taken a first step by embarking on a cross-industry partnership with Baidu.
Vanke announced that it had formed a strategic partnership with Baidu. Its community retail developments, lifestyle plazas, shopping centres and other properties would explore introducing Baidu’s LBS (Location Based Service) technology services.
Vanke said that, following the introduction of these services through its partnership with Baidu, it would use big data on its urban support services platform to analyse users’ consumption behaviour and improve the customer experience.
Vanke spent a year learning about internet thinking, and yesterday its president, Yu Liang, personally led the management team on visits to internet companies including Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi.
Yu Liang once declared that in the internet age, “the world is about to change”. He believes that traditional businesses will be eliminated if they fail to adapt to change. Reflecting on what he had learned from internet companies, he said: “Traditional businesses still do not treat their customers well enough… Vanke needs to treat its customers better.”
For further details, please refer to: Hong Kong Economic Times, Hong Kong, 2014-06-06