Traditional Brand vs. Web Brand

Hailiang Chen, Assistant ProfessorDepartment of Information Systems

College of Business, City University of Hong Konghttp://www.cb.cityu.edu.hk/staff/hailchen/

hailchen@cityu.edu.hk

Agenda

• Background• Brand Selection• Data• Monthly Sales– Tmall vs. Taobao shops– Shops with different reputation ranks

Background• Tao Brand or Web Brand: exclusively online

Available only online

New and became known recently

Sold by manufacturers themselves

Available both online and offline

Well-known before selling online

Sold online by distributors and retailers

Web

Bra

nd

Traditional Brand

Brand Selection• Most popular traditional and web brands based on

the number of transactions in the past 5 years

Traditional Brand: Web Brand:

Data

• Transaction Data– Date– Brand ID– Shop type– Reputation rank– Number of transactions

Data–Shop type:• B: Tmall shop• C: Taobao shop

–Reputation rank:

Reputation points

4-250251-500501-10001k-2k2k-5k5k-10k10k-20k20k-50k50k-100k100k-200k200k-500k500k-1m1m-2m2m-5m5m-10m10m+

Tmall vs. Taobao shops

Monthly Sales

• Taobao shops had slightly more transactions than Tmall shops in earlier years.

• Except months including sales days like double 11 or double 12, Taobao shops had a similar amount of transactions as Tmall shops in later years.

Monthly Sales

• Sales for Taobao shops and Tmall shops were close in earlier years.• Sales for Tmall shops increased significantly over the past few years.• Sales for Taobao shops remained largely the same over time.

Shops with different reputation ranks

Monthly Sales

• The sales trends and fluctuations are similar among different reputation ranks.• The number of transactions: Diamond > Tmall > crown > heart > gold

Monthly Sales

• Sales mainly came from crown and gold shops in earlier years.• Sales for Tmall shops increased over time and eventually surpassed Taobao shops. • The sales difference between Taobao shops and Tmall shops became increasingly

larger.