Tencent’s e-commerce businesses have been somewhat messy and now it is determined to revamp its complicated business lines. Shop.qq.com and buy.qq.com will be combined into buy.qq.com to be the sole B2C platform.
Tencent’s e-commerce arm has many different sub-brands, including 51buy, Paipai, shop.qq.com and buy.qq.com, however, similar in functions, which makes consumers really puzzled. Shop.qq.com is a B2C platform for brands while buy.qq.com is another B2C platform, and paipai.com is a C2C platform similar to Taobao.
Tencent’s e-commerce biz came to the strategy of ‘B2C+C2C’ last year, and sped up the integration of so many brands into one brand, buy.qq.com finally. It is expected that the back end of the new site would be channeled into 51buy’s and around 10,000 products would be on it. By the end of July, 51buy and shop.qq.com would unify orders, accounts and payment systems.
After the adjustment, Tencent would gradually base on a structure of ‘51buy as core business’ plus ‘shop.qq.com as core open platform’, with paipai.com still existing as a C2C platform.