Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Shanshan Tang, Global Business Lead for Canada at Alibaba. Alibaba’s Vancouver office was opened in 2018 with two main goals: to help Canadian brands (especially smaller ones) sell to China using their eCommerce platform, and to promote cross-border tourism and online and in-store enablement of Alipay.

Alibaba was founded as an eCommerce company 20 years ago. Today, it has evolved well beyond that. According to Shanshan, today the platform provides “a marketplace, logistics, payment services, marketing, call computing, big data, lifestyle, entertainment, and health.”

With the many unique challenges presented by COVID-19 in 2020, some interesting trends have emerged on Tmall’s platform. For one, online tools such as live streaming have become much more popular. In line with this, there has been a closer integration of Tmall’s online and offline stores. Shanshan shares that amid the complete shutdown in China during the pandemic, department store associates took advantage of their tools by live streaming promotional videos right “from their counters”.

The future of Alibaba’s eCommerce ecosystem sees the ever-closer integration of online and offline resources. There will also be an increase in the implementation of AI to Alibaba’s online tools to help merchants better customize the buying experience for individual consumers. Tmall has also put a focus on improving its brand loyalty forums in order to foster a greater sense of community among its customers.

As the first step for companies looking to capitalize on Alibaba’s many sales and marketing channels, Shanshan recommends that they enter the platform with their hero products initially, using content marketing via social media to promote their brand and value proposition.