China's two online-to-offline service providers Meituan.com and Dianping.com have merged.
The 15-billion-U.S. dollar new company will run on a co-CEO basis and keep the original structure of their respective human resources departments.
Meituan and Dianping will also continue to run their businesses in parallel, retain their brands, as well as remain independent.
Meituan.com is a group-buying site backed by Alibaba Group.
Consumer review service Dianping.com is funded by Tencent Holdings.
The merger is expected to compete with Baidu.
For more on this, CRI's Spencer Musick spoke with Doug Young, Associate professor at Fudan University and former China company news chief with Reuters.
Questions:
1.Why did Meituan and Dianping merge into a new provider of online services?
2.Analysts say the merge between Meituan and Dianping would allow them to have absolute dominance of the group-buying market in China. Do you agree with this point and believe the move will benefit both companies?
3.What is the significance to the Chinese online to offline market?
