Alibaba Group Holding is pushing millennials, who are representatives of the generation born in the early 1980s – mid-1990s, to take leading roles in the Chinese online market, since currently this e-commerce giant, based in Huangzhou, is going through a kind of transformation period to resist the pressure of competitors such as PDD Holdings.
Taobao and Tmall Group, which are part of the ownership structure of the mentioned company, have promoted six young executives to the positions of heads of key units. These decisions were made as part of a large-scale personnel reshuffle campaign.
Also, currently, the e-commerce giant, as part of its development efforts, is focusing on updating the concept of working with advertising materials and improving marketing approaches.
Alibaba is currently facing an urgent need for large-scale modernization, including to some extent at the level of formulating a new business philosophy. The e-commerce giant aims to engage younger consumers who prefer to interact with smaller virtual platforms belonging to the category of budget digital spaces of financial and economic orientation.
Wu Jia was put in charge of improving the user experience at Taobao and Tmall. This specialist managed to turn Quark from an app known to a limited number of consumers into a popular Internet search tool and virtual data storage. This digital development is popular among young Chinese users.
Chen Weiye, former executive director of the food delivery unit Ele.me, became the head of Taobao. Liu Bo was appointed to oversee Tmall. Cheng Daofang has become the new head of the e-commerce and live-streaming content arm.
Liu Yiman, the only woman among the new appointees, became the head of merchant-to-consumer business. Wang Tingxiang will lead the development of fashion and apparel.
Many of the new appointees have been educated in the technology industry and have experience in creating new products that target young consumers. For example, Cheng Daofang is the founder of Xianyu, a popular online flea market owned by the e-commerce giant.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu, after announcing the reshuffle, urged employees to revive the entrepreneurial spirit to secure and conquer the future. This statement clearly indicates that the e-commerce giant is striving for new heights. Judging by his decisions, Eddie Wu has well learned the rule that businesses that ignore the so-called trend realities find themselves on the outskirts of the territory of active development or leave it altogether, gradually losing ground and approaching the line of functional non-existence.
A representative of Taobao and Tmall Group said in a comment to the media that the new management developed fundamental skills and experience from the bottom up, noting that this knowledge and skills will help create a culture of innovation that promotes the development of a younger generation of talents.
Eddie Wu became CEO of Alibaba in September. Since taking office, he has called for changes and reforms, noting that this strategy of activity will help to cope with competition, which is showing an increasing trend. In the same month, Eddie Wu, in a letter to employees, stated his intention to rejuvenate the team, noting that in four years the main leadership would consist of millennials.
Alibaba strives to stand up to competitors whose business is showing rapid growth. In this case, the main challenge to the e-commerce giant’s status as one of the dominant players in the online market is posed by PDD, the owner of the budget shopping platforms Pinduoduo in China and Temu overseas, which were launched in 2015 and 2022, respectively.
PDD’s market capitalization even surpassed Alibaba’s last month. This figure of the main competitor of the company, headed by Eddie Wu, amounted to $194.9 billion. Alibaba has a market capitalization of $194 billion.
No one disputes the merits of PDD. Even Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder, who left the post of executive chairman of the company in 2019, praised his brainchild’s competitor for decisions, execution, and efforts in an internal memo. According to him, this fundamental basis allowed PDD to achieve an impressive result.
At the end of March, Alibaba began restructuring its large-scale functionality space, dividing the unified business structure into six independent units, including Cloud Intelligence Group, e-commerce under Taobao and Tmall, Cainiao’s smart logistics operations, Local Services, Global Digital Business Group, and Digital Media and Entertainment Group.
Eddie Wu called artificial intelligence and customer services the future of his company. He took direct control of Taobao and Tmall Group. Experts assessed this decision as a desire to make e-commerce operations more technologically advanced.
As we have reported earlier, Alibaba Group to Embrace AI.
