HONG KONG (Nov 9): Jack Ma beat Jeff Bezos into grocery stores. Now China’s richest man is again showing his rival the way by targeting 6 million mom-and-pop shops, the biggest test yet of a vision to reinvent physical retail.

Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is prepping for Singles’ Day -- an annual Nov. 11 online shopping fiesta dwarfing Black Friday and Cyber Monday that Citigroup Inc. estimates could generate a record 158 billion yuan ($32.5 billion) of sales. This year comes with a twist: the e-commerce titan has enlisted 10% of China’s convenience stores, about 600,000 outlets, to hawk goods and get billions of parcels shipped to customers nationwide.

Connecting your friendly neighborhood store to the internet is the latest thrust in Alibaba’s ambition to shake up China’s US$4 trillion retail market, itself conceived as a way to pump-prime a maturing e-commerce business. The idea is to connect virtual and offline worlds, drawing more customers onto its network to boost online orders while amassing valuable purchasing data.

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