LI-NING, founded by China’s “prince of gymnastics” Li Ning in 1990, is a professional sports brand. On September 20, 2022, LI-NING held its “Chasing Dreams” airport show in Hubei, China. However, on October 15, netizens pointed out that some of the new products resembled Japanese military uniforms from the time of the Second World War, quickly sparking a heated debate online. On October 17, two senior executives from LI-NING made statements on social media regarding the situation but only succeeded in drawing further criticism from netizens. LI-NING’s stock price also fell, causing many to question the executives’ actions on the matter. On October 19, LI-NING released an official response, bringing the public debate to a climax. How should LI-NING manage its crisis and brand communication better in the future?
Shanghai Jiujia Information Technology Co., Ltd. (CaiHong) was founded in April 2015 by entrepreneur Junyuan Huang. The company has transitioned from an e-commerce platform to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to better compete in China’s Legal Service Plus Internet (LSPI) industry. While exploring some key concepts about CaiHong, such as market positioning, business model innovation, SaaS, and growth strategies, several questions are raised about the company’s growth in the LSPI industry and the company’s application of SaaS. First, what factors facilitated CaiHong’s transition from the business-to-consumer (B2C) market to the business-to-business (B2B) market? Second, what is CaiHong’s approach to business model innovation based on the SaaS platform? Third, how can it build on the success of the SaaS model through continuous innovation and further disruption of the LSPI industry?
In 2007, the chairman of Supor Group led the company in a new venture in the sanitary ware industry. Supor Group was the first listed company in the Chinese cookware market, and Supor Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd. (Supor) was Supor Group’s most important industry. Supor established three production bases in Zhejiang and Shenyang, China. Its marketing channels included brand agents and direct-sale stores. The company also opened an online flagship store on Tmall, a Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer online retail. Since its performance on Tmall was poor, the company outsourced this channel to Company X. However, this led to channel conflict between online and offline channels. How could Supor Group resolve the conflict, improve channel performance, and achieve channel synergy?