Natural Factory: The Role of CSR in Starting a Business

Meng Rui; Qiong Zhu

Natural Factory: The Role of CSR in Starting a Business

Research output: Other contribution › Case Studies

Abstract

This case describes the development of Natural Factory’s social e-commerce model, the role of CSR in the founding of that model, the model’s initial successes, and the limitations it faced latterly. In 2018, Natural Factory had a turnover of over RMB 600 million, and by January 2019, it had nearly 6 million purchasing users and over 27 million followers. Despite such impressive growth, Natural Factory was having trouble acquiring new users. Marketing products directly to end consumers would allow the company to rapidly break through this bottleneck, but this would be at the expense of the small-scale merchants to whom the company owed its success. Su Lujiang, the founding CEO of Natural Factory, was faced with a serious dilemma: how could the company continue to acquire new users without alienating old ones?

Original language	English
Number of pages	15
Publication status	Published - 30 Jun 2020

Case number

ENT-20-651

Case normative number

ENT-20-651-CE

Case type

Field Case

Update date

12/04/2024

Supplement

For more details, please visit www.chinacases.org

Published by

China Europe International Business School

Keywords

digital economy
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
social e-commerce
strategic CSR
strategic corporate social responsibility
sharing economy
prosumer economy

Case studies discipline

Ethics & Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship
Sales

Case studies industry

Manufacturing
Retail Trade

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

OpenUrl availability

Full text

Cite this

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