Alibaba was initially founded in Jack Ma’s apartment in Hangzhou in 1999, before Alibaba.com was launched later that same year. In 2003, as the number of Internet users in China reached 80 million,[1] Taobao.com was launched as an online market. Shortly afterwards, both Alipay and Aliwangwang (instant messenger on Taobao) were launched to complete the purchasing process in Taobao. In 2007, the number of Internet users in China rose to 210 million[2] and Alimama was launched as an advertisement transaction platform. Taobao started to monetize that same year. Tmall was launched in 2008, as Alibaba ran both B2C and C2C platforms. In 2009, Alibaba Cloud computing was founded, illustrating Alibaba’s commitment to prioritize big data as part of its strategy. In 2010, the following three platforms were launched as part of Alibaba’s increasing focus on mobile payment: Juhuasuan (a platform for C2B); AliExpress (a global consumer marketplace) and Mobile Taobao App.
Alibaba’s framework is based on the three following targets:
- Chinese customers: Taobao (online shopping destination), Tmall (brands and retail platform), Juhuasuan (group buying marketplace), 1688.com (Chinese wholesale marketplace).
- Customers abroad: AliExpress (global consumer marketplace), Alibaba.com (global wholesale marketplace).
- Support platforms: Alipay (online payment service); China smart logistic (logistic information system); Alimama (online marketing services); Alibaba cloud computing (platform for internal and third-party use).
The three core factors that influence Alibaba are its Business model, Profit model and Credit model. In addition, there are four subsidiary factors namely considerate service, sensitive for business chance, new transaction patterns and completed system supporting Alibaba to gain its success.
- Alibaba’s unique business core to provide services mainly to small enterprises and individual defines a unique business opportunity which not only emancipates the productive forces of small enterprises but also offer much more diversified consumption choices for consumers.
Alibaba’s service offer focuses on small enterprises. Whether we talk about 1688 – a B2B eCommerce platform specifically aimed at wholesale and procurement business – Taobao (including Tmall business shopping mall) – a B2C & C2C eCommerce platform gathering numbers of individual sellers – or YiDaTong (the largest Chinese professional import and export agent) which not only subsidizes small enterprises but also helps them accumulate credit through history data, all three of Alibaba’s core businesses mainly focus on providing services to small enterprises helping them create value which could not be accomplished by any of them individually (such as cost control). Additionally, the three core businesses represent a complete eCommerce ecosystem.
The focus on small enterprises also leads to a phenomenon whereby a large variety of goods are available to a large variety of target consumer groups (age, profession, wealth, etc.) on the platform. In 2014, the Alibaba platform as a whole experienced a total transaction volume of 2.3bn CNY (close to 330 bn EURO).
- Alibaba’s profit model that Alibaba gets profits by charging services in marketing and technical supports rather than by charging admission fee contributes to a large and robust market share made up of loyal customers.
Alibaba’s profits mainly come from advertisements and keyword bidding within platforms, which in total represents 57% of profits. The second most important source of profits is the variety of technical services based on big data of consumer behaviors, representing 25% of profits. One of the important reasons why Alibaba could beat eBay China can be found in their strive to cultivate the online transaction habit among Chinese customers by allowing sellers to register for free and by removing intermediate fees. EBay China, on the other hand, was in a rush to harvest the Chinese market by charging fees for all transactions completed on the platform. Taobao thus gathered a large number of sellers, thereby encouraging an even larger number of customers to purchase via the Taobao platform. Hence, Alibaba successfully developed a strong and loyal online customer base.
Nowadays, the Alibaba platform represents more than 0.5bn registered users, among which there are more than 0.23bn active buyers and more than 8m active sellers. The Annual orders already exceed 11bn. [3]Thanks to the large number of customers on the platform, Alibaba can make use of advertisement, keyword bidding and customer’s data for profit. Advertisements on Taobao can generate thousands of clicks for a single brand; the bidding for keywords contributes to the higher ranking of brands in search results; technical services assist sellers in the management of their online store and relationship with customers through analysis of customers’ preferences and feedbacks.
- Alibaba’s accurate credit model, which builds a third-party payment platform as a bridge between consumers and e-stores to standardize payment process and to protect consumer’s rights, helps to develop a good and trustworthy reputation among customers.
- All sellers on the eCommerce platform are requested to pass an online certification test to verify their identity information.
Such certification ensures the supervision of sellers on the platform at all times and reduces the possibility of illegal transactions.
- All transactions are recorded and can be traced back by both sellers and customers. Based on the records, Taobao set up a system to measure the degree of integrity of both actors.
Such a system ensures that any fraudulent behavior is published for everybody to see and can lead to a significant loss in the number of future transactions because of the lack of the other party’s trust. The system protects the legitimacy of each transaction and helps customers chose more reliable sellers.
- Alipay is an online payment platform, combining ease of use, safety and efficiency. Payments are first transferred to Alipay. Once the buyers have received their product and ensured they are not faulty, the payment is transferred to sellers from Alipay. If the product is faulty or does not meet the expectations of the buyer and returned, so is the payment.
When eCommerce first appeared in China, the safety of online purchases was the most important problem that concerned customers. Alipay provides a reliable solution which has won the trust of Chinese customers. Because of its convenience, Taobao attracts more and more online shoppers. Nowadays, people can use Alipay to pay for any fees arising in their lives in general. Besides, Alipay allows customers to purchase goods on credit used in the current month and paid back the following month. Up to 2013, the number of users in Alipay approached 0.3bn while the number of transactions reached 900bn CNY (about 128bn EURO) and the active users of the Mobile terminal reached 0.1bn which exceeded the number of users on PayPal.
- Online feedback is largely encouraged. The more comments a customer writes for products, the more discount coupons he receives.
Word of mouth can strongly influence customer’s behavior, especially when all information concerning a particular product is more difficult to find. The large amount of comments can guide and encourage customers in their purchasing experience and help them pick out their preferred product, while reducing post-purchasing regrets.
- Alibaba’s considerate service offer provides a comfortable purchasing environment and a positive online customer experience leading to high user engagements.
Based on the analysis of its large customer base, Alibaba always knows how to provide the most suited services for optimal customer satisfaction. It helps sellers to maintain positive interaction with buyers; it offers online business training for various stores; it introduced a special coding system to manage the large number of stores on the platform; it developed its own instant communication tool to improve seller-buyer communication exchange; it enables the reimbursement of any product ensuring payment return within the following seven days, and so on. Those support services help sellers grow their business while helping buyers to find their preferred products, thus generating more and more transactions.
- Alibaba excels at identifying and seizing unique business opportunities, thereby positioning itself as a leader and developing customer loyalty.
In China, two festivals have a major impact on people all over the country: Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year) and ‘Double 11’ (a festival created by Taobao).
The ‘Double 11’ festival falls on November 11th, just between Chinese National Day and Christmas when people would prefer physical in-store shopping (offline). Although most customers would typically be avoiding shopping during that period, Taobao developed a campaign encouraging consumption, so much so that the day became an actual shopping festival. On that day, various brands offer different discounts and even launch new products. Customers pick out their various preferred products and purchase them online on November 11th. In 2014, ‘Double 11’ generated over 1bn CNY in total trading volume for Tmall within the first three opening minutes. Within the first 14 minutes 2 seconds, volumes exceeded 5bn CNY. Total volume for the day reached 53bn CNY (approximately 7.6bn EURO)! In a single day, Taobao generated revenue of 1.5bn CNY and net profit of more than 0.5bn CNY (approximately 71m EURO).[4]
The ‘Double 11’ day has successfully developed a new popular shopping event for the majority of customers in China. At such an event, the various Tmall sellers’ needs for advertisement and software services increase largely. Alibaba thus gains enormous profits from the event, while both sellers and buyers rely more on the open platform. Alibaba’s advantage in cloud computing also represents a valuable asset for the shopping festival.
- Always keeping an eye on customers’ evolving needs, Alibaba dares to challenge the traditional transaction patterns and explores new ways to create more value for customers.
C2B transaction model: When customers are in particular predominance for a certain transaction, Alibaba deploys the C2B transaction model to reduce costs in the traditional supply chain and shortens the time required for product turnover, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. On the one hand, Alibaba gathers a large number of scattered customers who express the similar needs to form a powerful purchase group that can buy single products at a wholesale price. On the other hand, Alibaba takes advantage of its massive online customer behavior data to develop products suited to particular customer habits. For example, the analysis may show that customers based in south regions use their dryers more frequently on account of the wet weather and therefore need more resistant machines while other customers may not like vacuum cleaners which require the user to bend down when using it. In that case, Alibaba takes charge of 12 product lines in 12 brands and exerts total control over the production schedule to ensure the production of the selected products which are predicted to be in high demand within shortened production cycles. Lastly, Alibaba integrates the product the production with front-end sales to bring instant personalized products to customers. Within the single day of May 8th 2014, Tianmao sold 180,000 sets of the 12 products which equated the sales volume for a period of 3 months on the internet.
O2O strategy: In Alibaba’s plan, customers can purchase a product by scanning two-dimensional codes and then receive products with another code which involves the interaction of the instruction and after-sales functions. Customers can also take part in various brand-run initiatives and receive targeted advertisements by scanning corresponding codes. In order to accelerate the plan execution, Alibaba is actively developing its expansion to mobile terminal areas – “Alipay Wallet” represents one such significant trial. “Alipay Wallet” not only provides different ways for payment such as code scan and direct cash-transfer, but also partners with different banks in order to provide an assistance service to customers for managing their many bills and coupons. Along with many other purchased Apps covering other domains including taxi services, maps, weather, music and travel, “Alipay Wallet” aims to transfer the content and activities of customers’ daily lives onto the O2O service.
- Rather than positioning itself as a simple eCommerce company, Alibaba focuses on providing excellent service quality to both sellers and buyers, by introducing easier ways to do business for the former and developing a positive purchasing experience for the latter.
In order to achieve its goal in terms of positioning, Alibaba keeps expanding its core business to many different domains such as advertising services, logistic network, financial services and mobile terminal services.
- Alimama: Alimama is an advertising platform which operates as Alibaba’s B2B system: owners of advertisement positions such as blog owners post the positions in Alimama and advertisers purchase their favorite positions according to their own criteria. Nowadays, Alimama focuses on three dimensions: Big Data, “Taobao Ke” (cost per sale mode) and the combination of video and mobile terminals. Through these dimensions, Alimama aims to help merchants find their specific target customers and help customers achieve their preferred products easily.
- Big Data: Besides the massive internet flow, transactions and database that Alimama represents, Ali also integrates comprehensive data resources that cover almost every aspect of customers’ daily lives through the acquisition of software companies in many other domains such as map, weather, taxi, music and travel. The accurate and diversified data can thus help advertisers select the most appropriate website advertising channels and reach customers effectively.
- “Taobao Ke” is a group of people dedicated to assisting merchants in the promotion of their products who receive a commission when a transaction is completed (cost per sale billing model). CPS is useful for eCommerce since people who successfully identify customers and convince them to complete a purchase are rewarded by commission.
- The combination of video and mobile terminal: In April 2014, Taobao bought 16.5% shares of China’s largest video site, intending to leverage the strengths of video in both PC and mobile to enable the interaction of an advertisement between the two terminals. When the audience watch advertisements during videos, Taobao will send the related information to the mobiles of people in the audience in various forms, including games and coupons to entice clicks from the audience.
- Ali micro finance: Ali micro finance mainly provides micro deposits and loans. It uses the data collected directly from the Ali platform: credit data and behavioral data. It translates the online customer behavior data into businesses and categorizes individual credit ratings by small enterprises according to their eligibility to apply for small loans from Ali micro finance (eg. small amount, short-term, momentarily borrow and return), as these small structures usually experience difficulty in obtaining loans in the traditional banking channels. Meanwhile, Ali’s small loan service also attaches great importance to the use of new technologies. It relies a lot on the cloud computing technology to determine whether there is a particular match between a certain buyer and a seller, whether they speculate credits, what rate the risk possibility stands at and so on. This not only ensures the safety and efficiency of the service but also reduces operating costs. In addition, the Internet makes it possible to provide a set of financial services, 24/7, 365 days a year, to large-scale small enterprises at the same time. This meets the major demand for capital resulting from the increasing number of small enterprises being founded in China.
- CSN (China Smart Network) project: CSN project was launched by Ali in collaboration with the four most influential logistics companies in China. Ali hopes to achieve the goal of enabling the delivery of products to buyers within 24 hours of ordering via the platform. Different logistic networks belonging to different logistic companies are integrated into forming the single most effective network in terms of parcel turnover for customer delivery. Different logistic companies focus and provide their expertise on specific portions within the network to maximize efficiency. Meanwhile, based on data analysis, Ali selects the most suitable logistic company for different portions of the network and allocates delivery businesses according to performance. As a consequence, logistic companies need to improve service quality and reduce costs, while ensuring continuous delivery. Moreover, customers can choose their favorite types of deliveries such as ‘fastest’, ‘cheapest’, ‘safest’ and ‘best service’ since the CSN can deploy the work capacities of the logistic companies.
ALI’S FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
Globalization
In November 2014, Ali expanded its commercial transaction worldwide for the first time. Since that date, Ali’s global ecosystem consisting of its eCommerce platform, logistic network, cloud computing and big data has been developed further and communicated on publicly. On Tianmao International’s platform, Chinese customers can purchase goods of popular retail brands abroad directly and customers from other countries including Russia, Brazil, the US and Canada can also purchase products from China directly. Due to the reduced amount of procedures required in foreign trades without importers, Ali is able to transfer the profits from the importers to the merchants and thus cut down transaction costs. The CSN network represents a global coverage of countries to increase the convenience for parcel delivery to customers. For example, CSN developed a special supply chain in Russia allowing customers to receive products within 35 days. It also increases the cooperation with banks in other countries to improve the payment system.
Besides the globalization of its eCommerce activities, Ali is also developing its finance business abroad. Recently, Ali has cooperated with Lending Club – the biggest online loan platform. The cooperation signifies that small American enterprises which get loans from Lending Club can now look for Chinese producers and supply sources on Alibaba’s platform.
Taobao Village
Focusing on eCommerce development in rural areas of China is one of Ali’s most important future strategies. In the same way that it always looks for business opportunities among small enterprises and individual customers, Ali fosters the online purchase forces in thousands of villages across China. Taobao village represents the village where active online shops reach more than 10% of local households and trading volume amounts to more than 10m CNY. The high concentration of online shops in these villages makes it possible to form an eCommerce chain made up of producers, suppliers, shops and logistics, thereby facilitating development and economies of scale. Moreover, Taobao village helps to address the problem of local unemployment (Taobao village brings about more than 280,000 jobs and the average income at Taobao village is 2.19 times higher than that found in normal villages); it contributes to the transfer of the environmental advantage into an economic advantage (since the natural and original product is welcomed by customers); and it helps to diminish the purchase gap between urban and rural areas. Up to December 2014, 211 Taobao villages were developed. Ali provides support through credit and loans, talent training and promotion.
Develop more offers suited to more fields in customers’ daily lives
Yulebao: An investment platform for television work with approximately 7% annual return on investment. Investors have the opportunities to meet with directors of various TV projects, take part in premieres, travel to the filming locations of certain TV programs, etc. The customer’s preference is better evaluated and will truly influence the Chinese entertainment trends. Besides, it helps high quality projects which do not necessarily have the matching high budget to get investment for production. Yulebao was launched in March 2014.
Ali future hospital: In August 2014, Ali collaborated with a renowned hospital in Shanghai, installing Alipay to allow patients to complete their own registration process, payment and report-fetching online. Most importantly, Alipay is combined with medical insurance in order to deliver a fully automated service to customers.
[1] The data comes from Alibaba’s prospectus: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1577552/000119312514184994/d709111df1.htm
[2] The data comes from Alibaba’s prospectus: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1577552/000119312514184994/d709111df1.htm
[3] The data comes from Alibaba’s prospectus: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1577552/000119312514184994/d709111df1.htm
[4] Data comes from “Le single day Chinois bat tous les records de ecommerce”:
http://www.le-webmarketeur.com/2013/12/10/le-single-day-chinois-bat-tous-les-records-de-e-commerce/
Author :
Prof. Xavier Pavie
Associate Academic Director, MSc in Management, ESSEC Business School
Director of iMagination Center
Yixuan Luo
Master student at ESSEC Business School