June 2020
Case
HBS Case Collection

Agile Consumer Product Innovation with Alibaba's Tmall Innovation Center

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:20

Abstract

Consumer products companies were beset by changes on all sides during the 2010s. Customers were increasingly turning to ecommerce platforms rather than shopping in-store. Meanwhile, nimble, digitally-savvy competitors were gaining market share by capitalizing on the troves of newly available data on consumer preferences. Alibaba was the largest ecommerce platform company globally and operated in China, which was seen by many as an image of the future of western markets. In 2017, Alibaba launched the Tmall Innovation Center (TMIC) which provided a range of services to support innovation for companies selling through the Tmall business-to-consumer platform. These included robust consumer insights backed by data from across Alibaba and mechanisms to rapidly solicit customer feedback. Armed with the TMIC, consumer products companies were learning that effectively targeting consumer preferences required a new approach to product development which had far-reaching implications across roles, skills, and organizational structure.