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Submitted By CharmeRahul
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Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University,Katra

Case Study of Alibaba.com

Submitted To:­

Submitted By:­

Mrs. Sonika Gupta
Faculty of CSE

Akshay Pratap Singh (2011ECS01) Rishabh Shukla (2011ECS13)

1

Table of Contents S.No

Topic

Page Number

1.

Introduction

3

2.

History

4

3.

Business Model

5

4.

Products and Services

7

5.

Target Users

8

6.

Payment Methods

9

7.

Comparison of Alibaba with other
Tech­Giants

12

9.

References

15

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Alibaba A marketplace, a search engine and a bank, all in one. Alibaba is China’s and by some measures, the world’s biggest online commerce company. Its three main sites — Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com — have hundreds of millions of users, and host millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more business than any other e­commerce company. One can think of it as a mix of Amazon.com, eBay and Paypal. Customers use Alibaba to shop online, sell unwanted goods and make online payments. Alibaba has two retail sites: Taobao, which features thousands of non­brand name products sold by smaller merchants; and Tmall, which offers brand­name products sold by big merchants. Unlike Amazon, which buys goods from suppliers and sells them to customers, Alibaba has always acted as a middleman, connecting buyers and sellers and facilitating transactions between them. This Chinese B2B trading platform connects buyers in North America and Europe with suppliers from China. Alibaba follows an aggregation of supply model (similar to other early B2B players), helping to solve the pain of global sourcing.

3

History
Alibaba Group was established in 1999 by 18 people led by Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, China. From the outset, the company’s founders shared a belief that the Internet would level the playing field by enabling small enterprises to leverage innovation and technology to grow and compete more effectively in the domestic and global economies.
Jack Ma named his company on “Alibaba ­ Open Sesame”. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. Alibaba opens sesame for small­ to medium­sized companies.
During Late 90’s, Alibaba Group raised a total of US$25 million from SoftBank, Goldman
Sachs, Fidelity and some other institutions.
After Alibaba achieved profitability in 2001, it’s sister organization Taobao was founded as a consumer e­commerce platform. Which further established TMall (TMall.com), a retail website, to complement its C2C marketplace.
After about a decade since its inception Alibaba group also beta­launched eTao as a shopping search engine.
Alibaba raised $21.8 billion in its debut, making it the biggest U.S.­listed IPO in history after the
IPO of credit card processing company Visa in 2008.

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Business Model
The initial business model of Alibaba was simple ; a facilitate a 24/7 meeting platform for suppliers and buyers around the world. From the start Alibaba did not just connect Chinese suppliers with international buyers, but it had the goal of connecting all importers and exporters around the world to each other. Although other B2B websites have always said “You cannot have a global company out of china , it makes no sense.”. From the very beginning Alibaba was , “the first global Internet emerging from china.”
In more technical terms three of the most prominent business models employed by Alibaba are:
B2B, C2C and B2C.
B2B:
Alibaba.com Limited the primary company of Alibaba, is the world’s largest online business­to­business trading platform for small businesses.
Founded in Hangzhou in eastern China, Alibaba.com has three main services. The company’s
English language portal Alibaba.com handles sales between importers and exporters from more than 240 countries and regions. The Chinese portal 1688.com was developed for domestic business­to­business trade in China. In addition, Alibaba.com offers a transaction­based retail website, AliExpress.com, which allows smaller buyers to buy small quantities of goods at wholesale prices.
According to some e­commerce analysts. Alibaba is probably the one organization in the world, which has been able to successfully provide a hassle free platform to small to medium sized businesses to carry on over the internet.
C2C:
Taobao, is Alibaba’s yet another portal, which utilizes consumer­to­consumer model similar to eBay. Taobao.com is China's largest shopping website, and tmall.com, which offers a wide

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selection of branded goods to China's emerging middle class. It features thousands of non­brand name products sold by smaller merchants
With around 760 million product listings as of March 2013, Taobao Marketplace is one of the world’s top 10 most visited websites according to Alexa.
B2C:
In 2008, Alibaba Group also established another online website Tmall, to compliment it’s C2C market. Although Tmall is mainly a business­to­consumer platform is known for offering brand­name products. The two sites (Taobao.com and Tmall) are hugely popular, and collectively account for more than half of all parcel deliveries in China. According to The Wall
Street Journal, their combined transaction volume in 2012 topped one trillion yuan ($163 billion), more than Amazon and eBay's revenue combined.
Tmall marketplace is China’s largest business­to­consumer (B2C) online­shopping venue. The site allows visitors to quickly view vendor fees, required deposits and other factors associated with operating a Tmall storefront.

6

Products and Services
Alibaba provides a wide variety of products and services through its various online portals. Some of these are:
● Apparel, Textiles & Accessories
● Auto & Transportation
● Electronics
● Electrical Equipment , Components & Telecom
● Gift, Sports & Toys
● Health & Beauty
● Home , Lights & Construction
● Jewelry, Bags & Shoes
● Machinery, Hardware & Tool
● Metallurgy, Chemicals, Rubber & Plastics
● Packaging, Advertising & Office
● Online marketing
● Cloud Computing
● Logistics Operations
● Electronic Payment Services
Alibaba is one of those online resources which claims a “Get everything and anything” availability. A consumer can literally buy products ranging to simple toys to automobiles. Hence,
Alibaba is proving to be a one­stop platform where a consumer can choose among a wide variety of options.

7

Target Users
Alibaba Group primarily operated within China, where e­commerce is synonyms to Alibaba. But within last decade Alibaba has expanded to almost all the corners of the world, consisting its user base from about 190 odd countries.

Alibaba has been turned into a global organization but still holding China as it’s major focus.
Almost 75% of China’s e­commerce market is dominated by Alibaba. China has 560 million internet users ­ twice as many as the U.S. ­ who spend an average of 20 hours a week online.
Although to get a hold on other emerging markets Alibaba Group has also established offices in the U.S., U.K., India, Japan and Korea.
Apart from small­to­medium businesses Alibaba group also provides online platform to individual customers through its parent websites Tmall.com and Taobao.com.

8

Payment Methods
Actually Alibaba Group has it’s own payment solution named as Alipay, is a third­party online payment platform with no transaction fees. Other than that, Alibaba also offers many ways to pay suppliers. Six most commonly used ways are Telegraphic Transfer(TT)/Bank Transfer ,
Letter of Credit, DA/DP, Western Union, PayPal and Escrow. Buyers are advised to consider each option carefully before committing to one.
S.NO

Methods

Conditions

Description

1.

30% Upfront TT

For buyers: 2.5 out of 5 stars
For suppliers:
4.5 out of 5 stars

Since many factories need money in advance to buy material for production,
30% Upfront TT is a common payment term for suppliers, especially when dealing with an unknown buyer.

2.

100% Upfront TT

For buyers: 1 out of 5 stars
For suppliers: 5 out of 5 stars

The supplier gets full payment before production starts. This payment method bears the same risk as Western Union and is not recommended when dealing with an unknown supplier.

3.

100% Backward TT For buyers: 4.5

If being paid after pre­shipment inspections, it is suggested to use trade terms of FOB. If being paid after receipt of merchandise, it is nearly 100% reliable for buyer cause buyer can cover the whole risk, however, on the opposite, suppliers are not willing to accept this way due to big potential risk of dispute or fraud.

out of 5 stars
For suppliers: 2 out of 5 stars

4.

Letter of Credit

For buyers: 4 out of 5 stars
For suppliers: 4 out of 5 stars

Highly recommended for transactions that are US $20,000 and above because the bank guarantees the transaction. But complex procedures and high threshold of registered finance may prevent some SMEs from being involved.

5.

Western Union

For buyers: 0 out of 5 stars

Not recommended when it comes to paying suppliers if the payment is not protected by

9

For suppliers: 5 out of 5 stars

escrow on a transaction made online through AliExpress. However, it's useful when transferring money to known individuals such as family members.

6.

Paypal

For buyers: 5 out of 5 stars
For suppliers: 3 out of 5 stars

A popular payment method for buyers as it presents a much lower risk to them.
However, it is less popular with suppliers due to difficulties in money withdrawal, high tax rates and uncertain claim of charge back from some notorious importers

7.

Escrow

For buyers: 5 out of 5 stars
For suppliers: 3 out of 5 stars

Money is only paid to the supplier after the buyer confirms satisfactory delivery of his/her order. A safe way to buying and selling online because Escrow protects both the buyer and supplier.

In terms of innovation, Alibaba is introducing a new secure mobile payment method as it gets ready for its IPO.The Chinese e­commerce giant will get ahead of its competitors Amazon,
Google and Paypal with an innovative and secure method of payment using fingerprints instead of passwords.
“The biometric technology, including encryption and authentication managed by Huawei, will allow mobile users to confirm payments for a wide variety of goods and services with their smartphones simply by swiping a digit instead of entering a lengthy code,” the company says on its blog.
Huawei, the world’s third­largest smartphone vendor by shipment volume , will also employ high­level encryption and verification to ensure only approved third­party applications, such as
Alipay Wallet, are allowed to access the fingerprint information for transactions.
It’s worth remembering that Alibaba is a pretty safe platform to purchase on. Not only do you have the standard protection that your payment provide gives, but Alibaba hold mostly all

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payments in Escrow until the buyer confirms they’ve received the goods and they’re as expected.
Until the buyer confirms receipt the seller doesn’t receive the funds.
Alibaba also offers some tips for shipping methods:­
● Using express companies such as FedEx or DHL
You can open the shipment in front of the delivery person. If the item is not what you ordered or if the item is defective due to handling, you have the right to return it to the delivery person. ● Using sea freight shipping method
If the item that you received is not what you ordered, do not clear customs!
You can always request for a customs officer or a third­party inspection company to conduct an onsite inspection before being issued a customs clearance certificate. If you only inspect the delivery after customs clearance, you might encounter legal hurdles should you decide to dispute the delivery.

11

Comparison of Alibaba with Other
Tech­Giants
Alibaba is really a technology company that serves retail customers and controls 80% of the
Chinese e­commerce market.Alibaba will compete most directly with on­line retailers like
Amazon, EBay or Zalando in Europe, Rakuten in Japan, Kobo in India, Wuaki in Spain and other major on­line providers with strong presence in their home and adjacent markets.
Take market capitalization, or the total value of available shares times the value of a single share , Alibaba’s market capitalization value is estimated at $155 billion. That number makes it look pretty small compared to the top three US tech giants: Apple ($593 billion),
Google ($400 billion), and Microsoft ($378 Billion). But it compares nicely to Amazon, which also has a market cap in the $150­billion range. And it’s growing.

Fig : Revenues of various famous Tech­giants

12

The comparison is not exactly apples­to­apples. Alibaba’s business model is similar to that of
Ebay, in that it is a middleman coordinating sellers and buyers. Alibaba doesn’t house and manage any products itself.
“Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV), the metric the company likes to highlight, is the total sum of goods and services transacted on all its sites.”
In 2013, Alibaba hosted GMV of $248 billion in transactions last year. That’s more than
Amazon and eBay managed to do — combined. And while Amazon takes home a lot more revenue than Alibaba from its fewer transactions, Alibaba takes a much higher net income from its revenue than Amazon. Alibaba now takes home 80 percent of its revenue as profit.

13

Alibaba’s revenue is the cut it takes out of each sale. In comparison, Wal­Mart’s nearly $250 billion in revenue represents the total value of all the goods purchased along with its built­in margins.This shows how complicated it is to value Alibaba.
To really understand how big a deal Alibaba is you’ve got to understand the growth of China’s e­commerce economy and the stronghold that Alibaba has on it.
China has over 618 million internet users and they’re spending lots of money. That’s twice the population of the United States, but only half China’s total population. So there’s lots of room for growth in a sector that’s already exploding. In 2010, China’s e­commerce market was $74 billion dollars. In 2013, it was $295 billion. By 2017, it’s estimated to reach $713 billion.
And Alibaba is cashing in big time. It controls 80 percent of online sales. Even though it’s not yet putting up the gross revenue numbers of Amazon and Apple, its 80 percent control of the market and 80 percent profit take from its revenue adds up to a huge, massive, crazy, growing amount of money.

14

References
1. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101590855
2. http://projects.wsj.com/alibaba/
3. http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/alibaba­statistics/
4. http://www.quora.com/What­is­the­business­model­of­alibaba­com­how­do­they­ma ke­money 5. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how­to­understand­alibabas­business­model­20
14­03­15­94855847
6. http://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswright/2014/09/16/so­what­exactly­is­alibaba/
7. http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21573980­alibaba­trailblazing­chinese­inte rnet­giant­will­soon­go­public­worlds­greatest­bazaar 8. https://gigaom.com/2013/06/30/alibaba­is­just­the­beginning­how­b2b­marketplaces
/
9. https://www.techinasia.com/alibaba­amazon­infographic/
10. http://www.alizila.com/alipay­huawei­roll­out­biometric­security­mobile­payments
11. http://www.alibaba.com/help/safety_security/class/buying/pay_ship/002.html
12. http://fortune.com/2014/09/12/alibaba­is­on­track­to­become­the­biggest­u­s­ipo­eve r­here­are­three­charts­you­need­to­see/ 13. http://www.dailynews.com/general­news/20140912/the­tech­story­of­the­week­isnt­a pple­its­alibaba 14. http://www.alibaba.com/Products
15. http://www.infoworld.com/article/2607722/techology­business/alibaba­s­business­m odel­and­the­chinese­market­make­its­ipo­hot.html 16. http://www.bbc.com/news/business­29077495

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...General Electric Everybody has heard of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb and the man who discovered electricity. General Electric started when a man by the name of Charles A. Coffin started a company called Thomson-Houston and they made different technology for the time, and were the main competitors for Thomas Edison. Over time, both companies couldn’t compete with each other’s different patents and inventions, so they eventually merged in the year 1892. Since the time that the two companies merged, it has become more than evident that General Electric is the number one company of its kind in the world. General Electric was sought out by the United States Government to create the first aircraft engine ‘booster’. After that, Thomas Edison began experimenting with plastic filaments for the light bulb, which led to General Electric creating the plastics department. General Electric is still expanding today and showing no signs of slowing down. They have recently purchased a company called Dresser, which is basically a company that tests different items and makes sure that they are not only working efficiently, but also working to make sure that they are using the least amount of energy possible. General Electric is also looking to expand in China, and recently signed a $700,000,000 contract with Saudi Arabia to experiment and use wind energy. I think that with all of the expansion that General Electric is doing, that their stock prices should rise. I believe...

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General Electric

...FINAL PROJECT: GENERAL ELECTRIC MGM 6110  Sección 80 Engineering Management I 16 de Febrero de 2010 Profesor: Table of Contents I II Intructions ............................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 4 III Definition of key topics ........................................................................................... 6 IV Current Applications/Examples ............................................................................. 9 V Discussion............................................................................................................. 10 VI Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 13 1|Page POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO GRADUATE SCHOOL GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN MANAGEMENT MEM 6110 – ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT I WINTER 2010 TRIMESTER Final Project Instructions & Guideline I. Instructions for Final Project: 1. Conduct a literature research including but not limited to text books and journals on the following topic: i. Conduct a critical analysis of the following company (REFER TO THE PROJECT LIST “ON NEXT PAGE” FOR YOUR SPECIFIC TOPIC). The critical analysis should be from the managerial standpoint describing the company origins, operations and their correct or incorrect application...

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General Motors

...RESEARCH PAPER ON GM Introduction "General Motors has no bad years, only good years and better years" (Sloan, 1972). This mantra established in 1950 by former GM president Harlow H. Curtice may have been true at one point, but is called into question today by many, including Wall Street. General Motors Corporation, also known, as GM or GMC is the world’s 2nd largest auto company in sales revenue behind Toyota which took the lead in 2006. General Motors reigned as the global leader in the automobile industry for the last 76 years, which was longer than any other automaker. Today, Richard Wagoner, Jr., GM Chairman and CEO currently runs GM, which was founded in 1908. GM today employs approximately 324,000 people around the world, with their global headquarters in Detroit Michigan. Their European headquarters is based in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2006, 9.1 million GM cars and trucks were sold globally under the following brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM, Daewoo, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, and Vauxhall. General Motors has a superb relationship with international connection. GM takes pride in fostering global partnerships and consumer relationships. GM is majority shareholder in GM Daewoo auto & Technology Co. of South Korea and has had collaborative ventures in technology and manufacturing with several other automakers. It also has ventures with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation of China. GM’s largest national market is the United...

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