Online sales smart move for Jingdong, Mercedes

BEIJING - Xu Wei never reckoned that when she logged on to online retailer Jingdong Mall (360buy.com) to buy a longed-for smart car on Monday, the cute vehicles would already be gone.

"Bookings started at 10 am when I was away from my computer for a meeting. I never imagined that two hours later, no cars would be left," said the 31-year-old, who works in Harbin, Heilongjiang province.

Xu was one of the 17,200 Jingdong registered users who added the smart car to their watch lists since the joint campaign by Jingdong and Mercedes-Benz, a division of Daimler AG, began on Feb 10. Only 300 got lucky.