Through the study of digital business, I have a different understanding of the digital economy. Before, I thought that e-commerce was only for those technology companies, such as Google. However, digital commerce exists in every corner of life, it allows consumers to become the main body, not just the merchants affect consumers. Just like Figure 1, nowadays, businesses are also influenced by consumers.

Figure 1: Relationship between merchants and customers

Source: By my own

A previous blog post mentioned How digital disruption changed fashion designer. Designers gradually understand consumers’ preferences through big data and other methods and design clothes that consumers love based on this tendency. When analysing the designer industry, MOOC courses gave me more opportunities to communicate with other students. Just like the aging problem mentioned in one of the articles, will my message affect the designer industry? One of my classmates’ answers gave me inspiration. Aging will affect people’s learning ability. For the fast-growing fashion industry, it is difficult for aging designers to follow the fashion quickly.

In addition, my blog was also cited by Green in his article, as shown in Figure 2.

Source：https://greenw.business.blog/2020/04/03/reflections-on-the-digital-business-module/

This course also gave us the opportunity to share our ideas, and my recognition of my article made me very happy, and I was gradually motivated to learn better and share better blogs with people.

In the other hand, while reviewing classmates’ articles, it is also a process of self-learning. During the comment process, I learned different views on the same thing, and shared my views on their articles by leaving a message to the blogger. Although sometimes I do not quite agree with the blogger ’s point of view, but I think this is normal, so as to encourage us to look at things more objectively, not just follow others.

These are my comments to other bloggers. Some of the comments have been replied. He expressed his recognition of my views. I and he also carefully discussed the problems facing Coca-Cola Company and the impact from the latest stock plunge due to the epidemic. This experience also makes me more like to comment on other bloggers and give my own views. I think this will make learning more interesting and understand some social issues more deeply.

This class also inspire me to continue learning the digital business. Please follow the video.

The video link:

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 APPs

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonbird1/2018/04/07/fixated-on-amazon-focus-on-alibaba-and-jd-com-instead/#2249638d8ebb

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:

点击以访问 p191101.pdf

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).

When people mention about digital disruption, the first thing that comes to mind is the IT industry. However, in recent years, the fashion industry has also grown rapidly, contributing approximately £ 32 billion in 2017 to the UK GDP ($ 41.8billion) and about 1 in 11 people engaged in the creative industry. (GOV.UK, 2018) The main reason for the rapid development of the creative industry is that the development of digital has changed the traditional model. This article will describe the aspects of digital business that have impacted designers and some changes that may be encountered in the future.

First of all, fashion designers now have more flexible office locations than they used to work in the office. They are more inclined to work in a comfortable place such as at home or a coffee shop (Gelles, 2018). Because a comfortable environment can help them develop more innovation, and because the digital business allows designers to upload their own design plans anytime, anywhere. So, it is not necessary to be limited to the office. In addition, digital devices allow designers to record inspirations anytime, anywhere without having to carry complicated painting tools such as pens and sketch paper with them, such as the camera and video functions of mobile phones and electronic hand-painted tablets.

The second important impact is on recruitment. In the past, recruiters paid more attention to applicants’ written resumes and performance during interviews. However, employers now prefer to understand candidates through their social media situation (Kreiss, etc. 2018), for example, through their social accounts to understand their character and attitudes to life, positive or negative. They can also judge whether the candidate’s design style meets the company’s needs by watching the creative designs and videos that the candidates usually release.

In addition, companies often find great talent on social media in order to recruit the right employees. From the pictures, it is easy to understand which aspects of the company are paying attention to and which are the aspects that bring a bad impression to recruiters. Due to this change, for designers looking for work, they must also run their social accounts well, show a positive attitude towards life and show their creative designs to attract the attention of recruiting companies.

Picture 1: Social Sleuthing Is Standard in Recruiting

Source: https://www.jobvite.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-Recruiter-Nation-Study.pdf

The third aspect is the advent of AI and bigdata. Compared with the little communication between consumers and designers in the past, now they are closer. For consumers, they can have the opportunity to express their views on the design and some opinions and can also express their preferences and tendencies through social media. AI and bigdata will help designers organize and count consumer opinions and ideas, and designers can use these opinions to design and meet consumer needs. This will reduce the uncertainty of new designs and the risk of production. For example, people have paid more attention to environmental protection in recent years, so more and more designers have begun to adopt environmentally friendly materials and choose 3D printing technology to reduce the environmental impact.

3-D print cloth

Source :https://youtu.be/3s94mIhCyt4

More details information about 3D print  follow the link

In future

Due to the rapid development of the Internet, design may no longer be a one-man design. It is more likely that designers will work together with online design. Even the world ’s designers can work together. （O’Keefe & Rottenberg，2017).This will require designers to change the style of independent design and accept a Joint Design Concept.This will help designers learn from each other and improve efficiency. As for the product style, like the collaboration design of many brands now, the future design style will also be more international and diversified.

In addition, based on co-design, the relationship between designers and consumers will change here. In the future, more consumers may work with designers to design their fashions, and also allow customers to have a sense of participation in the design process. This will also require future designers to have the ability to perfectly integrate customer inspiration into the design.

Although the electronic economy brings many conveniences to fashion designers, many people still cannot keep up with the development of technology. Nowadays society is aging, the general retirement age has increased to 68 in UK. (Batchelor, 2017) However, the digital economy is developing rapidly, and technology is being replaced more quickly. This will cause older generations of designers to not quickly accept and adapt to new technologies. This would make them less competitive with modern young designers, leading them to be kicked out of the fashion industry.

In conclusion, the development of digital commerce has changed the traditional model of many industries, changing more businesses from offline to online. For fashion designers, technology has brought a lot of design conveniences, which is more beneficial to develop their design innovations. But they have to maintain the ability to learn at all times to ensure that they are not eliminated by the times.

Reference list:

Gelles, D. (2018). The New York Times. The WeWork Manifesto: First, Office Space. Next, the World. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/business/the-wework-manifesto-first-office-space-next-the-world.html

Batchelor,T. (2017). Independent. State pension age: Millions of people will have to work an extra year before retiring at 68. Retrieved from: https://www.independent.co.uk/author/tom-batchelor

GOV.UK. (2018). Creative industries: Sector Deal (HTML). Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creative-industries-sector-deal/creative-industries-sector-deal-html

O’Keefe, A., & Rottenberg, S. (2017). Integrated Design Innovation: A Mindset for Designers of Tomorrow. Design Management Review, 28(3), 10-16.

Kreiss, D., Lawrence, R. G., & McGregor, S. C. (2018). In their own words: Political practitioner accounts of candidates, audiences, affordances, genres, and timing in strategic social media use. Political communication, 35(1), 8-31.

这是一篇示例文章，最初作为 Blogging University 的组成部分发布。报名参加我们十个项目中的其中一个，立即开始撰写您的博客。

您今天要发布一篇文章。不必担心您的博客的外观。如果您还没有给博客命名或是感到不知所措，也不必担心。只需点击“新文章”按钮，告诉我们您来此处的原因。

为什么要这样做？

• 因为它能为新读者提供背景信息。让他们了解您是做什么的，他们为什么应该阅读您的博客。
• 因为这将帮助您专注于自己对博客的想法，以及您想用博客来做什么。

文章可短可长，可以是对您的生活的个性化介绍或是博客宗旨说明，也可以是对未来的宣言或是对希望发布的内容类型的简要概述。

为了帮助您开始撰写，不妨思考以下几个问题：

• 您为什么要公开写博客，而不是写个人日记？
• 您认为您会写些什么话题？
• 您想通过博客和谁联系？
• 如果您的博客成功写到明年，您想要达到什么目标？

您并非一定要受此限制，博客的一个奇妙之处在于，随着我们学习、成长和与他人互动，它们是会不断演变的，不过如果知道从何处入手以及为何开始，这将会颇有益处，并且明确您的目标可能会激发您写其他一些文章的灵感。

不知道如何开始？只需写下您脑海中闪现的第一件事即可。Anne Lamott 是一位作家，大家都喜欢她写的书。她指出，你要允许自己写出“蹩脚的初稿”。Anne 提出了一个很好的观点，先开始写，之后再去考虑如何编辑。

在您准备发布时，给您的文章贴上三到五个标签来描述您博客的关注点 – 写作、摄影、小说、育儿、美食、汽车、电影、体育等。这些标签将帮助关注您话题的人在阅读器中找到您。确保添加“zerotohero”标签，这样其他新博主也可以找到您。