Alibaba Group, which controls the mainland's biggest corporate e-commerce site, will merge its Taobao and Alimama units, ahead of the company's plans to charge users for the Taobao service.
Analysts said the merger would strengthen services at Taobao, the mainland's largest consumer e-commerce company, and facilitate Alibaba's plans to turn Taobao into a paid site by next month.
'Sales staff at Taobao will start calling up its users after the paid service begins,' said Jacky Huang, a senior internet analyst at IDC China. 'Placing advertisements with Alimama will be just one more service for sellers on Taobao.'
Taobao services have been free since the site was launched in 2003 to fend off its main rival, eBay.
EBay exited the mainland market after its market share dropped to 10 per cent last year from about 80 per cent in 2002.
Alimama is an online advertising exchange platform with the largest network of Web publishers and advertisers on the mainland.
