Alibaba’s e-commerce marketplace Taobao has released a new customer loyalty feature to engage Chinese online shoppers.
In cooperation with China’s three major telecom operators, the new Data Traffic Purse service (our translation) allows merchants on Taobao, Tmall or affiliated platforms to gift small sums of mobile data to their customers.
Taobao Mobile users can find the feature in My Taobao–My Coupons–My Data Traffic Purse.
Alibaba noted that the data can be deposited in the purse and withdrawn in a lump sum, either to users’ connected phone number or given to others, as a data package from China Unicom, China Mobile or China Telecom. Withdrawal ranges were set between 10MB to 1GB, and can be used countrywide during the month of withdrawal.
Data packages can be distributed to users if their online spending exceeds a certain amount, or if they participate in interactive features, add comments or win a lucky draw.
Taobao added that this feature will function in the promotion activities for Double 12 Day, a shopping festival similar to Alibaba’s Double 11 e-commerce frenzy. As of writing, around 200,000 Taobao merchants have joined this program.
Editing by Mike Cormack (@bucketoftongues)
