China's Vip.com opens R&D center in US

Vip.com(NYSE:VIPS), a Chinese online shopping website specializing in discounted brands, established its first overseas research and development center in Silicon Valley in the US on Friday.

The R&D center will focus on analyzing Big Data and optimizing the user experience of the shopping website on mobile devices.

In the future, users of Vip.com may be surprised when they log on and see customized pages based on the website's analysis of their shopping habits. They can upload a photo of an item they come across while walking in the street, and receive recommendations concerning where they can find the exact item - or similar ones.

The R&D center will further strengthen the company's competitive edge in domestic and international markets of discounted brands, said Shen Ya, chairman and CEO of Vip.com.

"Customers' high loyalty and repeat purchasing are the important elements for Vip.com to make a rapid growth. We have been paying attention to users' shopping habits and requirements to keep improving their shopping experience," said Shen.

"The establishment of our R&D center in the US will further upgrade the website's analyzing capability of users' Big Data, and will help us to offer the world's most advanced online shopping experience."

According to Vip.com's financial report of Q1 of 2014, the number of active users of the website rose to 7.4 million from 2.8 million in the same period last year, and more than 70 percent of them shopped more than once.

With 50 million registered users, Vip.com took the third biggest market share among Chinese B2C shopping websites in the first quarter of 2014, according to iResearch Consulting Group. It has made profits for the sixth consecutive quarters by Q1 of 2014, and it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2012.