New retail is about fresh mindset, says Alibaba

Chinese internet giant Alibaba refers new retail to a fresh mindset, aiming to provide a better solution through integrating brands, platforms and retailers and connecting consumers online and offline.

In a speech at the Food and Beverage Innovation Forum 2018 in Shanghai on Thursday, Mike Hu, president of Tmall fast-moving consumer goods at Alibaba Group, explained the concept that was proposed by the group's Founder and Chairman Jack Ma two years ago.

Hu said on the sidelines that the group's online and offline businesses involving Hema Fresh, Tmall, RT-Mart, Suning Commerce, and Intime Retail Group have all been in the retail experiment.

Alibaba's new retail banks on increasing deals rather than competing against the existing demand, said Hu, adding that internet creates a new consumer group, citing data that only 8 percent to 10 percent customers in China overlapped between online and offline, compared with 30 percent in the United States and United Kingdom.

Also, for new retail, it is important to form a closed-loop view of consumer data by providing customers with a seamless online and offline experience, Hu said, adding that new retail is not simply about connection; instead, with insight enabled by data and technologies, new retail is to stimulate more consumer needs.

Hu said it's hard for mom-and-pop stores to have a new retail makeover in not-so-developed Chinese cities due to lack of closed-loop data while convenience stores such as 7-Eleven find transformation easier.

Hu told China Daily Website that Alibaba is mulling businesses centering on new retail as well as social e-commerce and community e-commerce with more interactions.

As the first campus store of Tmall started business earlier this month in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, Tmall plans to set up 1,000 campus stores in the next one year and reach 20 million consumers in 1,000 colleges and universities within three years, according to a report on Tmall's website.