...Case Study | Alibaba Group “F5 Application Delivery Networking solutions enabled us to build globalized data centers that are secure, reliable, and fast.” Wang Zhilei, Operations Director, Alibaba B2B Overview Alibaba Builds a Secure, Reliable, and Fast Data Center Using F5 Application Delivery Networking Products Global e-commerce leader Alibaba Group is the largest e-commerce company in China. The company plans to expand its operations significantly, and needed to support several e-commerce sites in different parts of the world. By using F5® BIG-IP® Global Traffic Manager™ (GTM) and F5 BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM), Alibaba was able to consistently provide high-quality and secure services to its 24/7 worldwide customer base. Business Challenge Founded in 1999, Alibaba Group has grown to include the core businesses described below. • Alibaba.com, the group’s flagship company and the world’s leading B2B e-commerce company, serves small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in China and around the world. It has more than 40 million registered users from more than 240 countries and regions. The company has offices in more than 40 cities across Greater China, as well as in Europe and the United States. • Taobao is China’s largest consumer e-commerce company. It incorporates Alimama, China’s largest online advertising exchange platform. With a registered user base of nearly 100 million, its transaction volume was RMB 99.96 billion (US $14.6 billion) in 2008, up 131...
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...Ankit Singh and Juan Alberto Calero Part A – e-Commerce in China vs USA 1. Overall, what are some key opportunities and challenges (obstacles) that confront ecommerce in China? How are these challenges similar / different from those confronting e-commerce in the US (or other countries that you are more familiar with)? Some of the key opportunities of e-commerce in China are: The internet penetration rate in China is growing at a much faster rate as compared to other countries. 25.5% users in China have engaged in e-commerce, while in US 71% has done so. This represents an enormous opportunity for e-commerce services, given that there is room for growth in China. The market is China is still in the beginning of its growth stage. The manufacturing prowess of china provides an excellent complement to the ecommerce market. Online shopping market has grown 64.1% over last year to $1.5 Billion. Online B2B market is valued at 65.7 B 69.8% yearly growth. With these accelerated growth rates, the e-commerce market will developed very quickly, players need to be aware of the stage of e-commerce in China and address the market accordignly. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) contribute to 68.8% of nation gross industrial output. Only 28% of SMEs utilised third-party B2B e-commerce platform. The government has a plan to increase it to 80% by 2012. Given this, the projected demand for e-commerce is known. In addition , players also known which type of businesses are using e-commerce...
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...How does Alibaba group create corporate advantage? (Why are the businesses under one roof?) Is this corporate advantage sustainable? Is the current degree of competition amongst the business units appropriate? Do you think Jack Ma should encourage more cooperation? If so how? The Alibaba group has thrived in the Chinese e-commerce sector from its inception in 1998. They currently account for over 70% of online shopping in China and delivered annual revenues of $636 million in the 12month period ending June 2009 (case p1-2). Alibaba’s successes are due to multiple factors that have allowed them to create corporate advantage, and thus establish market leadership in China (Case p1). The configuration and coordination of Alibaba’s multi-business activities are paramount to understanding the way in which corporate advantage is created. The relationships between subsidiaries are also a key point of scrutiny, as to whether Ma achieves the correct balance between competition and coordination of business units. Primarily Alibaba’s organisational structure has allowed the firm to create corporate advantage by encouraging subsidiaries to be leaders of their respective industries (Case p7). Alibaba has also benefitted from a strong set of shared values and a culture which focusses on serving the consumer above all else. This can be seen as a major source of corporate advantage creation across a number of subsidiaries. The sustainability of Alibaba’s corporate advantage hinges on...
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...Case Study: Should Alibaba Group Centralize? Jack Ma founded the technologically evolving and economically progressing business, Alibaba Group. Ma saw the potential of the Internet early on and created a multifaceted conglomerate, capturing a business market at its foundation. His goal was to provide a simple, efficient e-commerce platform and now holds half of the B2B in China. Wherever there was a need, Ma would adapt and create different business units to effectively provide the service. Alongside online trading, Ma provided a platform for retailers, individuals, payment services, management solutions, and an entertainment portal. Alibaba Group developed synergies within the units and subsidiaries to coordinate ideas, spread resources, and develop additional units to complement each other. He down streamed manufacturers provided a cheap storefront and added value services (such as keyword bidding and commission based sales). His model was unlike any other at the time. This kind of consolidation, led to competition among the subsidiaries. This kind of competition, however, has inspired efficiency and differentiation. Ma promoted collaboration and created cross-business and cross-functional teams. The business units also did not depend on large teams but rather channeled its focus on engineering and customer service. By the mid 2000’s, China had transitioned into a primarily private economy—which ultimately brought the nation to an economic boom. By 2009, 70% of Alibaba...
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...Case study Alibaba.com International Business Alibaba.com case study I. Case Background Alibaba.com is the flagship company of Alibaba Group, is the world’s largest online business-to-business trading platform for small-and-medium size businesses. Founded in 1999 by Jacky Ma in Hangzhou at eastern China, Alibaba.com has three major marketplaces. The company’s English language international marketplace Alibaba international (www.alibaba.com) serves to bring together importers and exporters from more than 240 countries and regions. The China marketplace Alibaba China (www.1688.com) is developed for domestic business-to-business trade in China. And Taobao (which means “digging treasure”) is China's most popular business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer trading site with more than 20 million registered users. In addition, Alibaba.com offers a transaction-based wholesale platform, AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com), which allows smaller buyers to buy small quantities of goods at wholesale prices. And Alibaba.com has achieved award after award in recognition of its achievement and impact on e-commerce, including “Best of the Web” by Forbes Magazine for seven consecutive years, the most popular B2B website by Far Eastern Economic Review, and other awards, including China Excellent Business Website and China Best Commerce Website. Alibaba.com is frequently quoted as one of the top five websites in the world along with Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and AOL, by domestic and international...
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...com, a leading B2B online market place in China with 53.8% market share. Founded in Dec. 1999, Alibaba provides both suppliers and buyers an easy to use online interface where they can match their needs. The report team considered this as an innovation because other than those typical challenges faced by innovative companies; Alibaba also faced specific challenges such as the lack of credit system in China when it was first founded, the severe pressure from capital investors due to the burst of dotcom bubble shortly after its inception, as well as the strong incumbent, eBay, entering China in 2003. By focusing on its core business of B2B online market place, continuously building its IT capability and integrating third-parties to establish a local credit rating system, Alibaba was able to stand out amongst the many players in the early dotcom age in China. At the same time, Alibaba successfully defended its B2B business by proactively entering into the C2C space and compete head to head with eBay. This report explores in specific details of actions undertaken by Alibaba, particularly by its founder Jack Ma, analyzes the impact of those actions, and finally presents an outlook for Alibaba’s business with our recommendations. Background Overview The Business Model of Alibaba Most of Alibaba’s customers nowadays still use a traditional supply chain; the business model of Alibaba is unique because it’s virtual in nature. The three components of Alibaba’s virtual supply chain...
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...com, a leading B2B online market place in China with 53.8% market share. Founded in Dec. 1999, Alibaba provides both suppliers and buyers an easy to use online interface where they can match their needs. The report team considered this as an innovation because other than those typical challenges faced by innovative companies; Alibaba also faced specific challenges such as the lack of credit system in China when it was first founded, the severe pressure from capital investors due to the burst of dotcom bubble shortly after its inception, as well as the strong incumbent, eBay, entering China in 2003. By focusing on its core business of B2B online market place, continuously building its IT capability and integrating third-parties to establish a local credit rating system, Alibaba was able to stand out amongst the many players in the early dotcom age in China. At the same time, Alibaba successfully defended its B2B business by proactively entering into the C2C space and compete head to head with eBay. This report explores in specific details of actions undertaken by Alibaba, particularly by its founder Jack Ma, analyzes the impact of those actions, and finally presents an outlook for Alibaba’s business with our recommendations. Background Overview The Business Model of Alibaba Most of Alibaba’s customers nowadays still use a traditional supply chain; the business model of Alibaba is unique because it’s virtual in nature. The three components of Alibaba’s virtual supply chain...
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...influence, it has a team of three countries, i.e. Japan, China and Britain. * Brand popularity Alibaba has strong brand popularity and it is difficult to find another B2B ecommerce with such huge brand influence power and brand popularity in China. Alibaba has been doing the scientific marketing efforts for the global customers since many years and has used it to establish a good reputation and brand popularity in their customer’s mind, which has become the core competitiveness of them, and that is hard for the later competitors to exceed which acts as value for Alibaba. * Good understanding of its customers The customers of Alibaba are able to effortlessly navigate through the website because it has been created with a very good understanding of its customers. It also provides another forum for the customers who want to communicate information or find business opportunity in their location. It keeps on bringing new innovative ideas in the e-commerce industry in China which is a strong indication of its understanding of its customers. * Strong internet enterprise union International internet union between Yahoo, Japanese Softbank and Alibaba by share relations has helped Alibaba get the advanced searching technology supports from Yahoo and the success experience from Japanese C2C market. Weakness * Easy to replace and imitate The business model of Alibaba is easy to imitate...
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...Alibaba Reaction paper Hary Gilles Business 101-002 Victor Hugo (02/26/1802 – 05/22/1885), recognized as the most influential French Romantic writer of the 19th century and as also the greatest French poet, once said: “One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas. .... Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come. “ If there is a quote that can best describe “Alibaba” the company, it is this one previously mentioned. As we will try to demonstrate in this paper, Jack Ma has proven to everybody that he is a great leader, a great motivator, an intelligent marketer, and above all, a great visionary. In this business, he started as an ordinary man by building websites for Chinese companies with the help of friends in the US, and in 1995, he founded China’s Yellow pages, widely believed to be China’s first Internet-based company. From 1998 to 1999, he then became the head of an information technology company established by “China Electronic Commerce Center”. In 1999, he founded Alibaba which presently has over 79 million members – hundreds of millions of users and merchants. Businesses using ALIBABA are counted by the millions, from more than 240 countries and territories. In September 2014, the world has witnessed what has become the largest listing in the U.S. history of the stock market. This company has raised $25 billion for its IPO (Initial Public Offering), overtaking VISA’s $19.7 billion 2008 IPO. How did the company...
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...Comparison of eBay.com and Alibaba.com Thomas Liquori o h T a m i L s o u q . i r e m Digitally signed by Thomas Liquori DN: cn=Thomas Liquori, email=thomasliquori@a ol.com, o=thomasliquori.me, l=New York, NY Date: 2010.09.05 16:57:16 -04'00' 12/16/2009 Professor Reddi: BUS451 By: Thomas Liquori, Danauda Benjamin, and Anca Barbu EBay.com Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 3 EBay.com Products and Services .................................................................................................................. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Comparison of eBay.com and Alibaba.com Ebay.com Financial analysis .......................................................................................................................... 6 Ebay.com Last Three Year Financial Graphs ................................................................................................. 7 EBay.com TOWS Matrix Analysis .................................................................................................................. 9 EBAY.com TOWS Matrix Graph ................................................................................................................... 13 Competitive Forces for ebay.com ............................................................................................................... 14 EBay.com Industry Rivalry...
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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 2 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...
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...Corporate strategy report on the online retail Industry (AMAZON AND ALIBABA) Introduction This report will first analyse the global online retail industry by showing its evolution, characteristics and future outlook. It will also analyse the competitiveness and strategies used by Amazon Inc. and Alibaba Group to dominate the market as well as give an insight of their future challenges and some concrete strategic suggestions for how these firms might deal with them. The industry lifecycle stages is a famous model explored by Michael Porter. According to him, the industry is one of the most important factor of a firm’s environment (Porter, 1980). The global online retail is still at the beginning of its growth cycle. It is also one of the most promising and therefore attractive industry. It has experienced a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.6% between 2010 and 2014. The sector grew by 19.1% in 2014 to reach a total value of $974.5 billion and is expected to grow by 114.5% by 2019 compared to 2014 to reach a value of $2,090.2 billion (MarketLine, 2015). The industry lifecycle stages is a famous model explored by Michael Porter. According to him, the industry is one of the most important factor of a firm’s environment (Porter, 1980). The global online retail is still at the beginning of its growth cycle. It is also one of the most promising and therefore attractive industry. It has experienced a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.6% between 2010 and 2014....
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...Content: Introduction: Market size and trends of the two markets P2 Comprehensive analysis The ALIBABA and the ebey market pattern P4 The principles involved in the introduction of the new product P10 Characteristics of those consumers who might be adopters P12 Hidden psychological motivations that hindered/contribute to success P14 Role of peer pressure or other elements P16 Conclusion: Recommendation/ Opinion P18 Reference P19 Introduction Market size and trends of the two markets. Alibaba since March 10, 1999 after the establishment soon became China's largest Internet companies and the world's second largest Internet companies, Alibaba is the world's leading small business e-commerce company, Alibaba Group's flagship business. Alibaba market through its three trading around the world to millions of buyers and suppliers engaged in online business.Three online marketplaces: focuses on serving importers and exporters in the international market, domestic trade in China market, and, through an associated company, to promote Japanese exports and the domestic market in Japan.In addition, Alibaba is also on the international market with a global wholesale trading platform for smaller, you need small quantities of goods to buyers fast delivery service.All transactions with the formation of a market more than 240 countries and regions from over 61 million registered users of the online community.In order to be transformed into...
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...Alibaba Group At Alibaba, strategy and organization go hand-in-hand. Every year we change 'the organizational structure in tandem with changes in strategy. Jack Ma, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group, stared through the fog at the cable stays of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge whistling past on his drive to the offices of Taobao ("hunting for treasures"), Alibaba's online marketplace for Chinese retailers and consumers. The longest transoceanic bridge in the world had a long gestation period: the feasibility studies took a decade. and even after their approval the plans changed to connect the northern end of the bridge to Jiaxing, rather than the Jinshan suburb of Shanghai as initially planned. When the bridge was opened to the public just over a year earlier, in May 2008, it cut the trip between the cities of Ningbo and Shanghai and southern Jiangsu province from 400 kilometers (km, equivalent to 249 miles) to just 80 km (50 miles), boosting economic integration and development in the Yangtze River Delta, which was home to 72.40 million people living in almost 100,000 square km of land comprising Shanghai, Zhejiang province, and Jiangsu province.? Ma couldn't help but smile to himself as he thought of the obvious similarities between the Hangzhou Bay Bridge and the Alibaba Group of companies. Just as the proposed bridge changed form as its plans progressed, the Alibaba Group evolved over an equally long period from its founding by Ma and a small group of friends in 1998...
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...Standard Chartered China becomes first international bank to launch Alipay’s Express Payment service Providing even more customer convenience with new express payment service 15 February 2012, Shanghai, China - Standard Chartered Bank (China) Ltd and Alipay today jointly announced the launch of the new Standard Chartered - Alipay Express Payment service. The launch of this new service innovation is a reflection of Standard Chartered China‘s commitment to customer service excellence and a first for international banks in China to provide a service which enables debit card holders to safely and conveniently pay off their online purchases, anywhere, anytime. Standard Chartered China debit card holders can now join 40 million other users of the Alipay Express Payment service to make secure and convenient purchases with as many as 460,000 online merchants worldwide that offer Alipay as a payment option, including Taobao.com and TMall.com. To use the Express Payment service, users do not need to register for online banking but must provide their debit card number, mobile phone verification code and other related information. Once approved, users need only their Alipay password and mobile verification code to complete transactions. Standard Chartered China and Alipay have implemented a rigorous security system to provide consumers with ease-of-use and account protection. The state- of-the-art security system reduces the risks caused by Trojan horses and phishing links...
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