TOKYO, JAPAN — Hakuhodo Inc., Japanʼs second-largest advertising company, is pleased to announce that Hakuhodo Group company Shanghai Hakuhodo Advertising Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Shanghai, China; President: Shoichi Hirano) has acquired official accreditation as an independent software vendor (ISV) (Note 1) of Alibaba Group’s Tmall Innovation Center (TMIC).
Through this, Hakuhodo Shanghai and the Hakuhodo Group will offer full-scale support for developing new products that are more attractive to customers and realizing e-commerce businesses. They will do this by combining massive stores of purchasing data from the TMIC-owned e-commerce site Tmall and other external data and functions with sei-katsu-sha insight and implementation capabilities the Hakuhodo Group has honed over many years.
In recent years, e-commerce has come to account for 50% of total retail sales in China (Note 2), and companies’ marketing is pivoting toward e-commerce. The number of new products in the Chinese e-commerce market has been increasing year by year, and Tmall, which has around 760 million users, launches several tens of millions of new products each year.
Because the time spent by companies in developing new products is long, accurately and effectively grasping the ever-changing needs of Chinese sei-katsu-sha is challenging, which makes it difficult to create hit products.
The Hakuhodo Group has long emphasized support for companies looking to revamp their marketing, and the acquisition of official ISV accreditation with TMIC will enable us to contribute more than ever to clients’ entry into and expansion in China’s e-commerce business. The forming of teams of Shanghai Hakuhodo specialists who have TMIC New Product Planner certification will enable the development of new products that meet sei katsu-sha needs, and much shorter lead times.
Moreover, besides new product development, we support Japanese and Chinese clients’ e-commerce businesses in the Chinese market with one-stop support, from marketing strategy planning to creative, ad delivery, and post-product-launch purchasing analysis using TIMC’s marketing dashboard.
The Hakuhodo Group will continue to leverage sei-katsu-sha data to provide full-funnel support for clients’ marketing DX to help them maximize the value they provide.
