A Wanda Plaza in Changsha, Central China's Hunan Province Photo: CFP

Electric fans sold inside a Suning store in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province Photo: CFP

Suning Commerce Group Co, China's leading household appliance retailer, announced on Sunday a strategic cooperation agreement with domestic commercial property developer Dalian Wanda Group under which the electronics chain will open outlets at Wanda Plaza locations across the country.

Analysts said that the move will increase Suning's potential pool of customers while boosting Wanda's retail-related business, which has reportedly been struggling.

According to a press release sent to the Global Times Sunday, Wanda will develop and customize property resources for Suning in line with the retailer's operating requirements at Wanda Plaza locations. There will be 40 outlets initially, with more to come.

Suning said it now has 1,600 physical stores throughout the country.

Suning has spent six years building up its supply chain, logistics network and after-sales services, and it plans to be more open to its business partners to provide better online and physical shopping experiences, said Suning Chairman Zhang Jindong at a press conference in Beijing on Sunday.

Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin described the cooperation as a win-win partnership because the two companies have leading roles in their respective industries that will both be enlarged by the agreement.

Suning needs rapid growth, which it hopes to achieve by getting lots of customers through Wanda Plaza's locations, said the press release.

Wanda, for its part, hopes to improve the Plazas' quality by including new business partners such as Suning that are combining their off-line and online operations, Wang said at the same conference.

On August 10, Alibaba Group Holding invested about 28.3 billion yuan ($4.45 billion) in Suning to become its second-largest shareholder, while Suning agreed to acquire at least 27.8 million new Alibaba shares for 14 billion yuan.

Suning will work with Alibaba to develop the online-to-offline business, while its partnership with Wanda will help it improve the off-line shopping experience of customers and further meet their needs, a public relations representative of Suning told the Global Times on Sunday.

Wanda Plaza, which Suning described as China's largest off-line business platform, will see its scale reach 135 locations across the country by the end of 2015 with 2 billion customer visits annually. By 2020, it aims to have 500 locations with more than 10 billion customer visits, according to the press release.

The pool of potential customers at Wanda Plaza locations is very attractive to Suning, which is seeking varied sources of profitable customers, Cao Lei, head of the China e-Business Research Center, told the Global Times on Sunday.

As for Wanda, Suning's presence could ease the problem of "ineffective commercial property operations" and upgrade related businesses, Chen Xi, general manager of the research center at Beijing-based RET Property Consultants, told the Global Times on Sunday.

According to media reports, Wanda's commercial property business has been an underperformer. Starting in June, Wanda began to slash the headquarters staff for its department stores, with the headcount cut to 50 from 150, domestic news portal jiemian.com reported on July 13.

Wanda couldn't be reached for comment on this by press time, but according to information on its website, as of mid-2015, Wanda had 86 department stores, down from 99 at the end of 2014.

"Considering Wanda's recent business performance, it's quite possible that Wanda initiated this cooperation" with Suning, Chen said.

Traditional retail giants in China are pooling their resources and transforming their relationships from competition to cooperation, Cao noted.

Last year, Wanda set up an e-commerce joint venture with two of the country's leading IT companies - Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings - to promote e-commerce business.