One of the big digital China / Asia stories of 2019-2020 has been the movement of Alipay into services. And I don’t think people have quite realized what a giant Alipay (i.e., Ant Financial) has become in China and increasingly globally. From a recent article by Technode: In what Alipay CEO Simon Hu dubbed the […]
Ctrip has forecast its revenues will drop 45-50% in first quarter. From KrAsia: Coronavirus spurs somber outlook for online travel companies Chinese major online travel agency Trip.com announced on its recently released Q4 earnings report that revenues would decrease by about 45% to 50% year-on-year (YoY) as a result of the coronavirus. Trip.com has already […]
Huawei released their 2019 financial results last week. And I had the opportunity to interview Karl Song, the VP of Corporate Communications, prior so I knew what was coming (but I got embargoed). You can see that interview here. And it was fascinating. Step back and consider what a truly crazy year Huawei had. Has […]
The big news yesterday was that Luckin Coffee has disclosed an internal investigation into fabricated sales for 2019. From CNBC: Luckin Coffee disclosed Thursday that an internal investigation has found that its chief operating officer fabricated 2019 sales by about 2.2 billion yuan ($310 million).Shares cratered more than 80% in premarket trading after the release […]
Congratulations!!!! You have completed the First Steps (Level 1) and are moving upwards. Awesome. Keep going. For Level 2, there are 5 learning goals. All concepts are in the Content Library, where you can see my overall digital strategy framework. There is also a Company Library, where you can search by company for articles and […]
You have completed Level 3. I hope you feel good about that. Welcome to Level 4. Very impressive. For Level 4, there are again 5 learning goals. We are going into other ideas in this level. And shifting out of business models and more into how to engage with increasingly connected customers. All […]
Welcome to the class! The approach for this class is steady, consistent progress, which is not unlike climbing a mountain. When you are looking up at a mountain, it can seem daunting. But it always begins with a couple of steps to get moving. That is the goal for today. To take the first steps. […]
A couple of topics for today. About how all business begins and ends with the customer. HeyTea and Why You Have to Thrill Your Customers. There was an interesting article last week about retail tea company HeyTea – and their rumored funding round at a price of 16B RMB ($280M). HeyTea is a popular and […]
Much of our discussion about digital platforms (Alibaba, Tencent, etc.) has been about their business models. And all their strengths, which are formidable. But I haven’t talked much about the experiences of the user groups on these platforms. What does this mean for merchants and brands selling on Alibaba? For restaurants on Meituan? For content […]
Two topics for Today’s Update / Lesson. Tencent Quarterly Results Are Awesome, Yet Again It’s almost boring how these digital giants keep putting up fantastic numbers. Numbers that any other business would dream of. Most businesses are long, hard slogs where you struggle and struggle. Margins are usually small. And growth is difficult and expensive. […]