Introduction
In recent years, due to the development of the digital economy, people are no longer relying solely on offline shopping. Online shopping should become a new trend. More and more businesses have started to operate their online shopping. Alibaba as an international organisation it is familiar with its popular online shopping platform (Taobao). At the same time, Alipay business was launched, including a series of savings, lending, and credit services to facilitate consumer shopping, such as online payment, offline QR code payment, and real-time exchange rate conversion. In 1999, Alibaba launched the first online full-category shopping platform in China, covering food, clothing and electronics. In 2016, it became the world’s largest retailer, surpassing Wal-Mart (Wu & Gereffi, 2018), until 2019, covering more than 200 countries. Orders exceeded 880 million (Alibaba, 2019).
![Alibaba's applications: clockwise from top left, Taobao, AliExpress, Taobao, Alipay and AliCloud.... [+] (Photographer: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg)](https://dgtl.business.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/0000.png?w=939)
Alibaba APPs
Why can Alibaba succeed in a short time?
Alibaba is committed to providing direct-to-consumer online trading platforms for SMEs. It mainly operates on platforms such as Taobao and Tmall. Taobao tends to individual sellers, Tmall prefers corporate sellers, and requires a corresponding business license and high margin to register, to a certain extent, ensuring the consistency of online and offline products. First, based on sellers, merchants need to register for an account and pay a certain amount of deposit to guarantee the quality of their products. After the information is reviewed by the Alibaba registration department, the merchants who pass can upload their products to the platform for sale. Customers can browse and shop through the mobile APP or website and complete the entire transaction process through online payment. Alibaba is committed to providing consumers and sellers with a better operating and purchasing experience. For merchants, he provides many paid analytics service tools based on digital commerce, such as big data, such as age analysis of browsing consumers, product clicks, etc.
Values to Sellers
From the seller perspectives, Alibaba provides a range of analytical tools, for example, sales statistics chart, suggestions for the customer segmentation, solutions to tackle sales problems (De Souza, 2020). In addition, the online selling channel or platform has a higher coverage of customer to help sellers to increase the number of customers thus maximising the profit margin for the sellers. Meanwhile, Alibaba also takes part in organising promotional activities to help particular sellers to increase their sales.
Values to buyers
1.Diversity
He provided a variety of goods, such as food, furniture, books, daily necessities, and even antiques. For example, customers can compare a variety of products from the pages of their website, so that it is easy to compare the cost-effectiveness of the products, so that they can choose the most suitable and the cheapest. In addition, because he offers a variety of products, customers have more choices.
2 Hidden problems
He solved the problem of many people purchasing hidden products, such as certain medical supplies or sex toys. From this point, many people’s face problems are solved, because many people will not buy this product from physical stores, so for this type of market, this type of market has been greatly expanded to meet customer needs (Werse, et al. 2019). Similarly, from the perspective of the merchant, the merchant can have better sales channels, thereby increasing their turnover.
3 Convenience
Due to the popularity of online shopping, people are more inclined to shop online. One of the reasons is that people do not need to go out to get the products they want
(Liu, et al. 2019). For example, you can place an order from the mobile app on the Taobao store to easily complete the entire transaction process. Greatly solved the cultural problems of people’s laziness and house.
4 Taobao provides a platform that does not require rent, so merchants can attract buyers through small profits but quick turnover. For example, their prices are usually cheaper than nearby department stores and supermarkets.
5 Surprise
Due to the development of e-commerce, people have developed a feeling of tearing out express mails like tearing gifts, which is a joy that physical stores cannot give.
The secret of Alibaba’s success
From the individual level, the success on Alibaba can be contributed by its founder Jack ma and his team. For example, Jack Ma has a great vision of seeking the opportunities, and his team can assist him by their professional skills, for example, skills on Accounting, Knowledge in laws.
From the firm level, Alibaba has created great values to both of sellers and customer. For example, Alibaba’s online platform helps sellers to do businesses and increase their sales. To the customers, they have more options and they can get the products they want at a price which is lower than the average market price.
Conclusion
To conclude that due to the booming of technology, the success of Alibaba can be contributed by Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma and his team seized the opportunity of online sales platform as the part of the success reason. From the firm level, Alibaba creates values for both sellers and buyers to satisfy their needs.
References list:
Wu, X., & Gereffi, G. (2018). Amazon and Alibaba: Internet governance, business models, and internationalization strategies. International business in the information and digital age, 327-356.
Alibaba Group (2019). Alibaba Group Announces September Quarter 2019 Results. Received from:
De Souza, M. F. P. (2020). A Brief Contextualization of Big Data in the International Business environment: evidence from the Alibaba Group’s transition. Brazilian Journal of Technology, 2(2), 648-665.
Werse, B., Benschop, A., Kamphausen, G., van Hout, M. C., Henriques, S., Silva, J. P., … & Korf, D. (2019). Sharing, group-buying, social supply, offline and online dealers: how users in a sample from six european countries procure New Psychoactive Substances (NPS). International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 17(5), 1237-1251.
Liu, G., Ding, X., Yu, C., Gao, L., Chi, X., & Shi, Y. (2019). ” I Bought This for Me to Look More Ordinary” A Study of Blind People Doing Online Shopping. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-11).
qihui wang digital blog 
Taking in to account the atop discussion, I agree to the point that the business model has contributed a lot to the organisation’s success. The most important part which has led me to coincide with the atop discussion is the value creation process. The digital business model of Alibaba not only aims at meeting the buyers’ needs but it also facilitates sellers massively. Alibaba has flexible and effective policies that enable both buyer and seller. Therefore, I believe that the digital business model of Alibaba is effective and long-lasting. The future of the internet revolves around e-shopping and the organisation’s value creation system tends to comply with future changes.
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I totally agree with the article. Jack ma, the boss of Alibaba, is undoubtedly one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 21st century. The company has a wide range of businesses, including e-commerce, finance, logistics, big data cloud computing, cross-border trade and so on. In addition, their company also has its own office application, and rich experience in digital technology, digital business and operation management. That can be said to be the “pioneer” of digital in the Asian market. Finally, the transformation of digital business model has become the core strategy of many enterprises and organizations, and the success of Alibaba also shows that in the future, digital technology and digital talents are also one of the competitiveness of enterprises.
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From the perspective of buyers and sellers, the reasons for Alibaba’s success are analyzed in detail. Seize the opportunity in the age of digital business. Build an online shopping platform and use big data technology to help sellers analyze customer buying preferences and conduct professional sales based on customer needs. This is a very successful case that is worth learning.
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hi Qihui
I really like your analysis about why Alibaba will succeed. From many surrounding attempts, it has been analyzed that Alibaba has created value and provided benefits and convenience to different consumers and sellers. I also think this is the foundation and the most fundamental reason. Alibaba’s success is two-way and creative. Digital payment and big data analysis are also great advantages that Alibaba has achieved in the field of digital commerce. Through the tracking of customer consumption behavior and data collection, through a complex algorithm, it is finally pushed to customers to meet the customer’s consumption behavior preferences to increase sales. This is also one of the reasons for Alibaba’s success.
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