China’s cross-border ecommerce business doesn’t get a lot of attention. It seems peripheral to China ecommerce. There are a lot of logistics, taxes and customs requirements. There are tons of regulations. And it’s just not sexy. But it is also non-political. It doesn’t have any of the national security concerns of telecommunication (i.e., Huawei and […]
This is a follow-up to my article on conversational AI with He Xiaodong at JD (article here, podcast here). I also spoke with Tao Mei, who is Vice President of Cloud & AI – and Technical support Vice President of JD. We talked about how AI was being used in fashion, which is a fascinating […]
In this podcast, Jeffrey Towson interviews the Vice President of Cloud & AI at JD.com about how AI is transforming the fashion industry. They discuss three key areas where AI is having an impact: personalization, supply chain management, and product development. For example, AI can be used to recommend products to customers based on their past purchases, track inventory levels and optimize shipping routes, and design new products that are more likely to appeal to consumers.
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 growing chain […]
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 creators […]
Three big things are happening in digital China right now. The coronavirus is radically altering the behavior of hundreds of millions of consumers (and businesses), resulting in what is being called the quarantine economy. Everyone is trying to move from in-person to digital interactions. This shift to digital interactions is supercharging and rapidly evolving China’s […]
A final short discussion about this week’s lecture / podcast on JD vs. Alibaba. And how they compete on different factors. The talk is located here: JD vs. Alibaba: How Retailers and Marketplace Platforms Compete and Evolve in China (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Podcast 18) I expanded on this in yesterday’s Daily Lesson, where […]
In this podcast episode of Jeff’s Asia Tech Class, Jeffrey Towson discusses the competitive advantages of JD and Alibaba, two of the largest retailers in China. He argues that JD’s competitive advantages include its strong logistics network and its focus on customer service, while Alibaba’s competitive advantages include its large user base and its ability to connect buyers and sellers.
I consider digital platforms the super predators of the business world. They are like that Indominus Rex dinosaur in the movie Jurassic World that is part T-Rex and part velociraptor (photo here). And when it breaks free (which always happens in those movies), it runs around eating everything on the island. Because it is the […]
In previous Daily Updates, I presented 4 slides that showed the evolution of Alibaba as a powerful marketplace platform. A 3 Slide Summary of Alibaba and Marketplace Platform Strategy (Daily Update, Jeff’s Asia Tech Class) Alibaba and the Power of Externalizing Capabilities (Daily Update – Jeff’s Asia Tech Class) In the first one, I argued […]