In brief
Vanke partnered with Baidu to explore location-based services and big data analysis to improve the customer experience. Having spent a year studying the internet mindset, Vanke emphasised the need for traditional businesses to adapt and treat customers better.
As executives at many traditional businesses increasingly talk about an “internet mindset”, Vanke, mainland China’s largest property developer, has taken its first step by entering into 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, a service based on location) technology.
Vanke said that, after introducing the service through its partnership with Baidu, it would use big data on its urban amenities and services platform to analyse users’ spending behaviour and improve the customer experience.
Vanke spent a year learning about the internet mindset, 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 believed that traditional businesses would be eliminated if they failed to adapt. Reflecting on what he had learned from internet companies, he once said: “Traditional businesses still do not treat their customers well enough…… Vanke must treat its customers better.”
For further details, please refer to: Hong Kong Economic Times, Hong Kong 2014-06-06