Dalian Wanda retail and promotion app fails to win over customers
Dalian Wanda’s Ffan app, which is intended to lure back customers to bricks-and-mortar shops, has been hit by a series of problems. Ffan fell from a high of 5.13 million users in December 2015 to a low of 824,000 in February, according to research firm Questmobile. The app allows people to buy cinema tickets, book dinner reservations, find parking spaces and download discount coupons, however, poor functionality and slow download times have deterred users. The app was launched as a joint venture with Tencent and Baidu, however, the two partners pulled out and launched their own apps in competition with Ffan.
As consumers worldwide increasingly turn to buying online instead of going out shopping, Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin thought he could get ahead of the threat to his 185-mall empire by launching an app to lure people in: to buy movie tickets, book dinner reservations, check for parking spaces and download discount coupons.

But so far Dalian Wanda Group Co’s Ffan, or feifan as the app is called in Chinese, has been plagued by problems. They include the loss of two major partners, multiple management changes and a steep decline in users. Perhaps most importantly, its weak functionality and slow download times mean people who try it seldom come back.