Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    FRENCH retailer Carrefour is staging an online promotion for Guangdong-made products this week, giving away tens of thousands of red envelops through WeChat to encourage the sales of such products.

    From today through next Monday, customers can win a red envelope containing a 50-yuan coupon by following the retailer’s WeChat account, the company said yesterday. They can use the coupon at any Carrefour store in Guangdong when buying Guangdong-made products worth at least 200 yuan (US$32.5).

    The promotion covers more than 1,000 products under 150 Guangdong brands, including Vitasoy, a soy drink brand, Flower Fresh, a dairy, Vinda, a tissue paper brand, and Garden, a bakery.

    Guangdong Provincial Government initiated an online promotion on Guangdong-made products last year, helping traditional manufacturers upgrade their sales channels in a new market remodeled by the Internet. The WeChat subscription account for the event had roughly 370,000 followers and gave away 41 million coupons worth 2.23 billion yuan last year. More than 400 retailers joined the promotion, which helped 76,000 Guangdong companies increase sales.

    Carrefour is the largest retailer and the only foreign brand to have joined the promotion, the retailer said yesterday.

    “The promotion is helping Guangdong manufacturers, and we hope to maximize the influence of the promotion through our network of stores,” Cao Chengzhi, president of Carrefour’s South China division, said. “We also hope the promotion can help us attract more customers.”

    Carrefour plans to give away 200,000 red envelopes containing coupons worth a total of 10 million yuan.