IN China, the sales maxim of “know your customer” is being taken to new lengths.

One of the first firms to join an Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. program that provides years of consumer shopping history, snack food chain Bestore Co. plans to link facial recognition technology with the e-commerce giant’s account data by the year’s end.

For customers opting to have their facial data in Bestore’s systems, that means shop assistants will be able to check on what food they like the moment they enter one of its stores.

Bestore, which already offers customers the option of paying with Alibaba’s face scanning tablets, has also started using Alibaba’s other services for more successful marketing.

It can now arrange for a person who likes salty food, owns an SUV and probably has a family to receive an ad suggesting suitable Bestore snacks for a Spring holiday road trip, said Huang Xiao, Bestore’s head of e-commerce.

“With the partnership, our strategies are more focused, sales behaviors are more targeted and resources are better allocated,” Huang said.

The Alibaba program, called A100 and which counts Nestle SA and Procter & Gamble Co. as clients, is part of a major push by e-commerce giants in China to retool their relationship with merchants — offering them a trove of shopper data in return for broader and closer partnerships.

The shift is integral to what Chinese e-commerce firms call “new retail” or “boundary-less retail” — the marrying of data available from Internet shopping and gathered through brick-and-mortar stores to provide highly personalized services.

It has been enabled by the widespread use of payments by smartphone, the rise of facial recognition technology and Chinese consumer tolerance of data-sharing between businesses.

Other services Alibaba offers to retail clients include shopper movement “heat maps” to help stores better design the layout of products, as well as its chat app Dingtalk to communicate within their own firms and with customers.

Keeping merchants happy and signing them up for more services has taken on added urgency for Alibaba and rival JD.com.

Both are seeking to diversify amid slowing e-commerce revenue growth at home — due in part to saturated markets in China’s biggest cities, flagging consumer confidence from the U.S.-China trade war and increased competition from rivals such as newly listed Pinduoduo Inc.

“For Alibaba and JD.com, this is critical for their overall ecosystem because they have pretty much already exhausted the online growth,” said Beijing-based Jason Ng, partner at consulting firm Bain & Company.

By providing data-driven tools to retail stores, e-commerce firms can expand the amount of data collected. “It’s not just about money, it’s about continuing to grow, and hopefully they will find a way to monetize that,” he said.

JD.com, which provides similar services to Alibaba, says it helped U.S. diaper brand “Huggies” work out why Chinese competitors were rising in popularity, prompting Huggies to change to a material that is more absorbent and comfortable when wet. That contributed to a 60 percent rise in Huggies sales on JD.com in 2018, the Chinese firm said.

After a trial run of a new product, JD.com said it creates a “profile” of a potential buyer based on early sales that is cross-checked with its entire userbase, before targeted ads are sent to close matches.

Other tools JD.com offers to retail clients include an customer service chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that can the “sense” the mood of customers, and adjust its tone to appear more empathetic. (SD-Agencies)