Nielsen, a leading global insights provider of what consumers watch and buy, will take digital solution as its biggest profit source in China within three to five years, the company's top management said on Tuesday.

The company is betting on its digital solution package, which centers on all types of services for online sellers, in China's fast-growing e-commerce sector and its huge growth potential.

"We invest hugely in the digital solution package for online sellers, trying every means to help them answer one question – 'What can I do besides opening a shop online?'," said Kiki Fan, managing director of Nielsen China, in an exclusive interview with China Daily.

According to the China E-commerce Research Center, a major third party research institute, the value of China's e-commerce market reached 13.4 trillion yuan ($2.1 trillion) in 2014, an increase of 31.4 percent over the previous year. B2B market grew 21.9 percent to 10 trillion yuan, and B2C market grew 49.7 percent to 2.82 trillion yuan.

The e-commerce sector, undoubtedly, has become a new growth engine for China's economy and its contribution to the overall economy will be more obvious in the coming years, said Zhang Zhouping, senior analyst with the center.

"Though the return on investment of digital solution might not be so eye-catching in the short term, we believe we are in the right direction of the future development and it will be absolutely the biggest profit source in the coming few years," Fan said.

As one of its latest efforts in this regard, Nielsen and Alibaba Group on Tuesday launched a new solution named New Offer Advisor. By leveraging Alibaba's e-commerce big data processing ability and Nielsen's data analysis capability, this product is aimed at helping clients drive innovation with a deep understanding of the already crowded and highly competitive e-commerce market.

"It helps our clients in three ways: finding the white space for product innovation in the online market, tracking and optimizing their operation in the competitive environment throughout the pre-launch and post-launch period, and improving the online return," said Fan.

This new solution follows Nielsen's partnership with Alibaba in 2014 on an OmniChannel product, which is endeavored to unleash the potential of big data to bring a complete view of the Chinese consumer both online and offline.

"Big data is powerful, but the key lies in turning data into meaningful insights from the clients' perspective," said Yan Xuan, president, Nielsen Greater China.

Besides learning the tracking data of online shoppers, New Offer Advisor also incorporates response data from online surveys with selected online shoppers.

"We are especially impressed by the ability of this Nielsen product to find the exact consumer segment for concept and product tests. It brings us meaningful inputs and feedback for optimization in no time," said Jeremy Lin, Big Data External Partnership Leader, Philips, who has pilot-tested the New Offer Advisor jointly provided by Nielsen and Alibaba.

"Moreover, we are allowed to find the white space for future product development by looking into the analysis of online public opinion provided by Nielsen," Lin added.

huyuanyuan@chinadaily.com.cn