On April 16, Wang Yulei (CEO of Tmall) said during an interview that Alibaba decided to reposition Tmall and separate it from Taobao. That is, Tmall targets at fashionista in tier one and tier two cities, and Taobao targets at all levels of consumers.
Tmall’s reform has reached bottle-neck, and it’s very unlikely to expect increasing users. Tmall did not aim at increasing market share or entering a new market, they wanted to improve services for old customers. Tmall would work with Taobao in 2014. Tmall planned to enhance cooperation with brands and get exclusive resources, rather than transferring the price pressure to brands.
Wang also said frankly that profiting Taobao released the pressure on Tmall, therefore Tmall needed to find another way to make profit.
Tmall used to brand itself as a big B2C platform for authentic products. However, several years later, almost all Chinese B2C platforms sell authentic products. Tmall’s position and advantages became vague. As the emerge of vertical B2C platforms such as Vipshop and Jumei, Tmall underwent huge pressure to change.
Analysts also thought it might had something to do with Alibaba’s IPO, Tmall’s repositioning will impress capital market.