Alibaba is not going to rebrand its B2C marketplace Tmall to Maoxiang, an anonymous executive at the company’s digital business unit told local media outlet Guancha on Feb. 19. The source partially confirmed a prior rumor that Alibaba is working on Maoxiang, a new online direct sales service adopting a model similar to rival JD’s, but says Maoxiang is just an “exploration project” within Tmall app.
I don’t think Alibaba would rebrand Tmall. The Tmall brand is also tied to Alibaba’s smarthome, the Tmall Genie. The Tmall brand has established itself as a badge of trust and authenticity on Taobao.
Alibaba has been pushing Tmall to rival JD in terms of providing ecommerce sold by good brands with quality customer support and after-sales service. They need a special D2C app or brand to compete with JD.
Leave a Reply