This case focuses on the challenges and key decisions facing Winner Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Winner Technology or Winner) when shifting from selling brick-and-mortar retailers traffic analytics systems to providing them with big data services.
Founded in 2004, Winner Technology had become the leader in the Chinese traffic analytics system market. However, with shifting consumer behaviors and the recent advancement of technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, Zhang Hongjun, Chairman and CEO of the company, was keenly aware that simple traffic data analytics could not keep up with retailers’ growing needs, while the application of big data in the retail industry brought about tremendous opportunities. Therefore, in 2015, Winner Technology established winneryun.com, a platform to marshal traffic data in the Chinese retail industry, and launched enhanced big data services based on these data resources at the end of 2018.
However, the new big data services have received mixed responses from the market. Zhang and his executive team have identified two fundamental issues that the company needs to address: What kind of revenue model should be adopted for big data services? And how can Winner cultivate the market?