Tongwei Co. Ltd., founded in 1995, initially focused on producing and selling aquaculture and livestock feed. In 2006, the company entered the photovoltaic (PV) new energy industry. Since then, it has consistently maintained leading production volumes in high-purity silicon and solar cell modules. Tongwei adopted a specialized, decentralized, and differentiated development model, concentrating on three key segments of the PV industry chain. In early 2023, facing increasing competition and a growing trend towards industry integration, Tongwei considered whether to fully integrate its industry chain, pursue partial integration, or continue with its specialization strategy.
<div style="font-size: 0.95em; line-height: 1.4;"><p align="justify">Founded in 2013, Xiaohongshu had evolved from an online shopping guide into a major app. By August 2023, the platform had introduced the “buyer era,” marking a pivotal shift in its business strategy. Xiaohongshu integrated influencer and merchant operations into a unified department to enhance efficiency and strengthen the link between content creation and e-commerce. It needed to determine whether a commission-based buyer model could transition the platform from influencer-driven live e-commerce to a model where professional buyers would curate and present products directly to consumers. This strategic move required careful evaluation to ensure alignment with the platform’s core strengths.
Hefu Catering Management Co. Ltd. (Hefu) was founded in 2012 as a high-end Chinese noodle chain brand. Its mission was to promote Chinese culture through Chinese fast food on a global scale. In 2018, Hefu experienced significant demand growth. To ensure a steady supply of safe, fresh, and organic foods, Hefu established a centralized kitchen in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, serving 300 restaurants in nearby cities. As Hefu expanded into North and Central China, it faced challenges in delivering fresh food from the centralized kitchen to meet the demands of all its restaurants.
Chengdu Jwell Co. Ltd. (Jwell) was established in July 2013 as a subsidiary of Pangang Group Investment Co. Ltd., a prominent state-owned enterprise. Jwell served as a comprehensive service platform, facilitating transactions, payments, and billing for various commodities, including steel, vanadium, titanium, and chemicals. Its digital transformation journey began in 2015 with the launch of its e-commerce platforms, and currently, its warehouse management relied on a smart warehouse chain based on digital warehouse technology. However, this approach faced challenges with respect to the real-time sharing of information about cargo and financial data and the lack of adequate support for security in e-commerce transactions, which hindered Jwell's further development.
Outland provided a global communication and exhibition platform for artists and collectors. Outland conducted art transactions in the form of cryptocurrencies, addressing challenges prevalent in the traditional creator economy. Renowned artist James Jean collaborated with Outland in 2022 to release a new hand-drawn digital art series called Fragments. The series received widespread acclaim. The fans had high expectations for Fragments’ narrative derivative work, "Adrift," set to launch in 2023. The platform aimed to establish a fan community centred around Jean and his work. However, fans wanted to interact with the artist and participate in the secondary creation of his work, while also receiving better financial returns. How would Outland establish an intellectual property licensing mechanism to increase non-fungible token (NFT) creators and holders an enhanced financial return?
In August 2022, Pinduoduo Inc., one of the fastest growing and largest e-commerce companies in China, faced several challenges. Alongside intensified competition from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc., as well as weakened consumer spending due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pinduoduo had reached a potential growth ceiling within the domestic market. To explore new growth avenues, Lei Chen, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, would need to evaluate the potential opportunities and challenges Pinduoduo might encounter in its overseas e-commerce business expansion.
One afternoon on January 10, 2020, Zhengting Chen, the chief executive officer of Sichuan Zhiyuan Digital Finance Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Zhiyuan), was reading an internal report on the company’s performance. Founded in 2013 in Chengdu, Zhiyuan was one of the first platform companies to provide traditional supply chain financial services in southwest China. Zhiyuan had experienced a decrease in both annual revenue in 2019 and year-over-year growth rate of membership. So, Chen wondered how the Zhiyuan’s digital transformation could help attract customers and sustain the company's long-term growth by ensuring the authenticity and transparency of transactions.
Rodolphe Saadé was the chief executive of the CMA CGM Shipping Co., Ltd. a giant in the maritime industry that was long criticized by customers for its lag in digitalization. Realizing the importance of digitalization, Saadé defined digitization as a key strategic priority for CMA CGM’s development. This case traces CMA CGM’s digital transformation process and discusses how Saadé and CMA CGM successfully addressed different challenges to gradually launch a series of digital innovations to the company’s processes, products, services, and business model. However, as new waves of technology, from autonomous vehicles to smart data continued to emerge, how could CMA CGM leverage the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the shipping industry? How could CMA CGM make full use of big data to optimize business operation decisions?
The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding was a world-renowned giant panda research institution and tourism destination and had successfully attracted millions of tourists since its opening. The surge in tourists, however, had also increased pressure to provide a tourist-friendly experience, and long wait times generated more complaints than any other issue. Tourists experienced long queues at the ticket offices and at the entrances of the panda house and delivery room, which greatly impacted their experience. Moreover, long queues also created other issues, such as managing crowding and the negative impacts on the giant pandas’ emotional and psychological health as a result of the noise generated by tourists waiting in lines.
Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company, had dedicated itself to corporate responsibility from the time of its launch, focusing on poverty and environmental protection. Alibaba released its Carbon Neutrality Action Report in December 2021, aiming to achieve carbon neutrality in its own operations and slash emissions across its supply chains and transportation networks by 2030. Alibaba was launching several new initiatives, and needed to know whether they would help to achieve its carbon neutrality goals.
In May 2021, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Alibaba), China’s biggest e-commerce company, faced a number of challenges. Alibaba, which operated under a platform business model, was confronted with weakened consumer spending due to the coronavirus pandemic as well as increased competition from JD.com Inc. (JD.com) and other e-commerce entrants. To boost business growth and strengthen Alibaba’s leading position in China’s e-commerce market, Daniel Zhang, the company’s chief executive officer, would need to evaluate the possibility of adding a direct online retail model to complement the operations of its flagship platforms Taobao and Tmall. What challenges could Alibaba potentially face in its e-commerce business expansion?
In 2015, HiteVision Tech Co. Ltd., a leading Chinese enterprise in the research and development and manufacturing of interactive educational flat-panel displays (IFPDs), faced a developmental bottleneck. The general manager of the commercial product department turned his attention from the educational to the commercial IFPD market. In early 2018, during the process of entering the commercial IFPD market, the company encountered a series of channel conflicts, which were resolved by adopting a multibrand strategy. However, after achieving initial success in the commercial IFPD market, the company encountered new channel conflicts. In early 2019, the company was facing a distribution problem and an e-business channel issue. The general manager again needed to find a solution.
As a traditional retailer focused on selling home appliances, Suning.com Co. Ltd. (Suning) grew quickly and became a leading retailer in China, dominating the market until the 2000s. By 2021, however, Suning was facing challenges, including fierce competition from e-commerce giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Limited, Jingdong, and Pinduoduo Inc. and from its upstream brand manufacturers. It also faced financial pressure in its core business due to aggressive expansion. Suning’s revenue, assets, and equity declined, and its net income, which had significantly declined since 2018, had been in the red since 2020. Should Jindong Zhang, co-founder of Suning, change the company’s current business strategy? How could Zhang use an omnichannel structure to ensure Suning’s sustainable growth?
As a leading short-video social and livestreaming app in China, Kuaishou Technology’s Kuaishou application (app) was facing various challenges, including fierce competition from ByteDance Ltd.’s Douyin. In June 2018, to sustain its long-term growth, Kuaishou needed to evaluate the possibility of entering the livestreaming e-commerce market, as livestreaming was becoming one of the hottest ways to sell to Chinese consumers. The co-founder and chief executive officer of Kuaishou Technology needed to decide whether Kuaishou should launch a livestreaming e-commerce business. If so, should Kuaishou cooperate with an existing e-commerce platform or build its own e-commerce ecosystem? What potential challenges might Kuaishou face in its livestreaming e-commerce business expansion?
Founded in 1989, the Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Corporation Beijing (Ameco), the earliest and largest civil aircraft maintenance enterprise in China, was a joint venture between two of the world's largest airlines: Air China Limited (Air China) and Deutsche Lufthansa AG (Lufthansa). In response to a crisis in the domestic market after 2012, Ameco decided to enter the international market. After Ameco had considered several methods for implementing this strategy, it eventually formed a successful alliance with the Lufthansa subsidiary Lufthansa Technik AG (LHT). Ameco and LHT communicated with each other to solve existing problems and produced a successful design collaboration. In 2019, while this partnership was proceeding smoothly, the general manager of the business aviation modification department needed to decide on a strategy that would help the company also succeed in the areas of market development and technical capability.
Iloof Technology Co. Ltd. was a Chinese start-up high-technology company at the forefront of the smart water bottle market, one of the newest sectors in the reusable water bottle industry. Smart bottles or cups, also known as interactive water bottles, were technologically advanced devices that had wireless communication capabilities to connect with electronic devices, such as smart phones. They also helped record and optimize the user’s water intake and develop healthy drinking habits. In 2016, after two years of research and development, Iloof Technology Co. Ltd. released its first smart water cup, the HeyDo S1, to great success. However, after three quarters of growth, sales slowed and the company’s founder considered expanding to traditional or offline channels to sustain growth. Could the company operate in both online and offline markets? What potential challenges would the company face in its sales channel expansion?
In February 2020, an entrepreneur and his team in China created a mobile application called Tong Cheng Lian Kang (TCLK), which crowdsourced information on publicly known cases of COVID-19, enabling users to find out if they might have been exposed to an infected individual. The application leveraged blockchain technology to record and validate user submissions of COVID-19 cases to ensure that submission and validation data were immutable, transparent, and decentralized. Users could volunteer to submit publicly recorded cases of COVID-19 or to validate the submissions of others in exchange for digital tokens on the blockchain platform, which they could use to redeem small gifts. As the number of new COVID-19 cases decreased, the entrepreneur wondered how to expand the blockchain concept to build a more sustainable business model. He was considering three options: expanding internationally, which would require building trust with users who lacked familiarity with Chinese applications; diversifying within the healthcare industry by expanding to a business-to-business model, possibly by linking prospective patients to hospitals and health care; and applying the blockchain concept to address issues in industries outside of healthcare. How could he best ensure the sustainability of TCLK?
In January 2015, the founder and chairman of Sunyuki Agricultural Co., Ltd. (Sunyuki), was considering a major change to his company. Founded in 2010, Sunyuki was one of the first online fresh-food retailers in southwest China, providing safe, fresh, organic foods to high-end consumers who had a strong preference for high dietary quality. Since its launch, Sunyuki had achieved soaring average annual growth rates of almost 100 per cent. However, it was becoming difficult to attract new customers through online channels alone. Therefore, the founder was considering the option of opening physical stores as an off-line channel to complement the company's successful online sales and distribution channel. Because of rapid growth in the fresh-food industry and intensifying competition, the founder needed to carefully consider the company’s next steps. If Sunyuki opted to expand off-line, how should it proceed? Specifically, how should the company manage a new online and offline strategy in an omnichannel sales and distribution environment?
An estimated 640 million online gamers participated in China’s games industry in 2019. Their pursuit included earning points or tokens that they could redeem for prizes or gifts and in-game assets. A centralized platform allowed game operators to share the administration and management of tokens and rewards, but the system was not as transparent or immutable as stakeholders desired. In January 2019, a new points redemption system was launched based on blockchain technology. The new system, involving game operators, users, custodian banks, suppliers, and tax agents was credible and more transparent, and foreshadowed China’s growing interest in legal digital currency. How policy would shift toward digital currency was unclear; however, the fact that the blockchain race between countries had intensified was clear. The application of blockchain in China’s games industry was just one of the visible examples.
In 2019, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Limited, one of Hong Kong’s most popular jewellery chains, had recently adopted blockchain, under the leadership of managing director, to address some of the challenges in the diamond industry. In particular, the company had moved from paper certificates to digital certificates; blockchain also allowed the firm to trace the origin of diamonds, eliminating the problem of blood diamonds. In order to continue as a leader in transforming the diamond industry for the digital age, what other changes should the managing director implement? Should the company emphasize its use of blockchain technology in marketing to end consumers?