China Jo-Jo WeChat store opens

China Jo-Jo Drugstores has opened a store on Tencent’s WeChat social media platform.

The China Jo-Jo WeChat foray will be carried out via its subsidiary Hangzhou Jiuzhou Grand Pharmacy Chain. It is the first Hangzhou based pharmacy to launch stores on WeChat, which has more than 500 million active users.

China Jo-Jo says the move, following partnerships with Alipay and Ali-Health, is part of a broader strategy to build its own Online-to-Offline (O2O) ecosystem for its pharmaceutical and healthcare products.

In late 2014, Tencent unveiled its online merchant stores for small to medium size businesses based on its popular WeChat platform, and it has quickly developed into an all-in-one mobile marketing service. WMS allows merchants the opportunities to engage with their customers in real-time and gather data based on consumer profiles and spending behaviors. Merchants can also use WMS to update product information and manage inventory and merchandising process. WMS allows customers to pay by WeChat Pay, a convenient payment method similar to Alipay. “As a well-known payment method that customers already trust, WeChat Pay can greatly increase online transaction flow for WeChat Merchants. By opening our pharmacy on WMS platform, China Jo-Jo hopes to attract a much larger and loyal client base by implementing better data mining, target marketing and sales promotions such as group-buy, gift certificates, flash sale, coupons and loyalty program,” the company said in a statemet.

By integrating our in-store IT system with WMS’s powerful payment, O2O and service backbone platform, we intend to transform our brick and mortar stores into “Intelligent Pharmacies”.

China Jo-Jo President, Li Qi, added: “In a traditional drugstore, there is only one-way interaction between the store and its customers. Now in our O2O drugstores, we and our customers can easily communicate with each other through WeChat platform anytime and anywhere. Clients can now enjoy customised service and received more targeted benefits such as coupons and member discounts. For us, we can now build, track and analyse numerous data on customer spending pattern, which will be used to improve the on-line purchasing experience as a whole. O2O business solutions will remain an integral part of China Jo-Jo’s strategy in the future.”

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