Customers line up at a Tmall pop-up shop. [Photo by Niu Jing/For China Daily]

Under most of the deals, the parties use their store of consumer data in order to integrate offline stores, merchandise, logistics and payment tools to deliver a better overall shopping experience.

In the Alibaba-Bailian deal, the pair co-designed brick-and-mortar stores that merge online and offline shopping experiences. The two also combined their membership bases, and delivered enhanced customer services through technologies such as geo-location, facial recognition and big data-driven customer management systems.

Massive changes are on the way in payment and customer loyalty programs. Alipay, the digital wallet under Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, will be accepted at 4,700 Bailian stores in 200 Chinese cities and regions. Bailian's indigenous prepaid cards can be integrated into Alipay as a payment option.

Alibaba's archrival JD, the nation's second-largest online marketplace, has joined the ranks and opened three offline outlets at Yonghui Superstores－one of China's largest supermarket chain operators－in Beijing, in which the e-commerce company has a 10 percent stake.

It has also opened stores in lower-tier cities across China. But instead of being a physical showroom of products, they mostly serve as distribution, delivery and after-sales maintenance centers for home appliances.

A woman browses a store selling imported goods in Qingdao, Shandong province. [Photo by Yu Fangping/For China Daily]

JD also neatly took the lead by allowing delivery of online orders for fresh, chilled and frozen produce to convenience stores, from which the last mile delivery can be made to the customer's door or collected in-store, once the time and place have been confirmed.

When Tencent expands its scope to offline commerce, people need to bear in mind two things, market observers said.

First, Tencent confines its role as an "enabler and infrastructure provider", and insists calling such initiatives Smart Retail instead of New Retail. That path diverges from the one taken by Tencent's multi-faceted rival Alibaba and its stake-controlling deals.