Dangdang.com, one of China's biggest online retailers, completed its IPO in the United States on December 8, 2010. [Photo: hexun.com]
The price war in China's online book market has been heating up due to the intensifying conflict between 360buy.com and Dangdang.com, the Beijing Youth Daily reports.
Chairman and President of 360buy.com Liu Qiangdong published eight consecutive microblog updates on Wednesday, claiming that Dangdang.com tried to prevent publishing houses from cooperating with 360buy.com.
In one of the eight updates, Liu Qiangdong claimed that Dangdang had sent a letter to several publishing houses, threatening to stop cooperation with them if they continued selling books to 360buy.
He warned that if Dangdang.com didn't abandon the attempt to force out his company, 360buy.com would never stop its discount campaign.
Dangdang.com has denied the claims that it manipulated publishing houses.
According to Dangdang's senior director of public relations, Zhang Ying, the company just forwarded a letter coming from the domestic publishing house X-iron, which complained that 360buy.com had harmed the interests of the company and its partners by selling books at ultra-low prices and called on all the distributors to stop selling books published by X-iron to 360buy.com.
Previously, 360buy.com specialized in selling electronic, IT and digital products. The website announced it was entering the book market on November 1 of this year.
Soon after that, Dangdang.com, one of China's biggest online bookstores, began a new discount campaign to mark its December 8 IPO in the U.S.
On the same day, Dangdang CEO Li Guoqing said in an interview that his company would take revenge on any competitors who initiated price wars.
In response, on December 14, book market newcomer 360buy.com pledged to offer books at prices 20 percent lower than its rival. Consumers with a membership at 360buy get more discounts, according to its regulations.
Following 360buy's decision, Joyo Amazon, another major player in the B2C (business-to-consumer) sector, announced it would give book buyers a 20-percent discount on the basis of previous low-price strategy, related to about 800,000 books.
