ChinaVirtuoso

Tmall Global, the international branch of Alibaba's Tmall.com, has reached an exclusive strategic deal with South Korea's largest duty free store group the Shilla Duty Free and Thailand's largest duty free store group King Power to commence a global duty free project in China.

According to Liu Peng, general manager of Tmall Global, this is an innovation for cross-border e-commerce. By introducing overseas duty free stores to Chinese consumers, Tmall will provide a new model to Chinese tourists who shop in foreign countries.

With the deal, Chinese consumers will be able to order products from Korean and Thai duty free stores on their PCs and smartphones after booking outbound flights. They will be able to track product availability and pricing at the stores. When finishing their tours in those countries, consumers can directly pick up the products they ordered from airport duty free stores by providing messages or barcodes they received. In addition, they can enjoy Tmall Global's special discounts and convenient payments in RMB.

Liu said that Tmall Global's world duty free project is an important focus of Alibaba Group's global strategy. Based on the real consumption scenarios of outbound traveling and outbound purchases, this project was hatched in September 2014.

Liu revealed that Tmall Global is still contacting overseas duty free groups which can cover many countries in Europe and America as well as some of the Chinese duty free groups. They will continue to expand to reach more popular outbound traveling destinations.

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