Alibaba Group Holding is encouraging CEOs to live-stream on its domestic e-commerce platform Taobao as part of its strategy to reclaim consumers from rising rival Pinduoduo and other budget-focused platforms during China’s midyear shopping festival.
On Wednesday, Taobao launched a new live-streaming service that features business executives promoting their companies through a format that has become integral to online shopping in China.
Taobao Live is offering CEOs a “one-stop service” that covers all aspects of production during a live stream, from product management to operations.
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The appearance of prominent entrepreneurs on live-streaming platforms has been a hot topic in China recently. Xiaomi founder Lei Jun held two live-streaming sessions in the past two months, and e-commerce firm JD.com has been hosting live streams featuring an AI-powered digital avatar of its founder Richard Liu since April.
Beauty blogger Austin Li Jiaqi, seen live-streaming on Taobao on October 26, 2018, has become one of the biggest stars in the live-streaming e-commerce space.
Taobao first launched similar services for celebrities and social media influencers in February.
This underscores Alibaba’s efforts in recent months to find new growth opportunities in a domestic market where it faces heightened competition from PDD Holdings’ Pinduoduo and ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok that has been pushing into e-commerce.
