Tmall Global announced on July 28th that it would launch the duty-free shop project in China partnering with Shilla Group and King Power, who are the largest duty-free groups in South Korea and Thailand respectively. The strategic cooperation of the three parties is an innovative model of cross-border e-commerce, and the new shopping model could enable Chinese prepurchase duty-free products online, instead of spending much time shopping when travelling overseas.
The global duty-free shop project is an important strategy of Alibaba. Based on the principle of “outbound tourism and “outbound purchase”, Tmall has cooperated with many duty-free groups all over the world, and built an integrated chain of data, logistics and payment.
After booking outbound tourism flights to Thailand or South Korea, consumers can buy duty-free goods on Tmall duty-free shop on both desktop and mobile. And consumers can enjoy a discount of 10% to 20% paying with RMB. When leaving the country at the end of the journey, consumers could take away the goods with the messages or barcodes of successful payment at the airport duty-free shops.
Tmall Global is currently in contact with many domestic and foreign duty-free groups to cover the market of some popular European destination countries and the United States that Chinese tourists like to travel most.
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