Success Factors of Alibaba


Alibaba Group’s Founder is Jack Ma, who a former English Teacher from Hang Zhou, China. Initially, Alibaba founded in 1999 with 18 employees.
The company mission is to provide basic technology infrastructure and marketing coverage to help businesses, brands and other merchants that provide products, services and digital content to interact with users and customers using the influence of the Internet.
Alibaba’s goal is to build a future business infrastructure. It foresees that our clients will meet, work and live in Alibaba, and we will be a company that continues to operate for at least 102 years (1).
Throughout the years, Alibaba Group involved in many businesses which including Taobao.com, Tmall.com, Juhuasuan.com, Aliexpress.com, Alibaba.com, 1688.com, Alimama.com, Aliyun.com (Alibaba Cloud), Ant Financial Services Group, Cainiao Network and so on. 


Till now, no one can deny the success of Alibaba Group as well as its platforms such as AliExpress which launched in 2010. 
What makes Alibaba Group and its platform to be succeeded?

Following are some of the key success factors of Alibaba Group:-

(a) Commitment to Corporate Cultures & Values
Alibaba culture is about supporting small business. They run an environment in which all participated customers, businesses, third-party service providers and others have the chances to grow. Their achievement and rapid growth is established based on the entrepreneurial spirit, innovative spirit and unwavering focus to meet the demands of their clients (2).
The company’s values are the basis of their way of doing business, how they recruit, evaluate and compensate their people (2). The six values are customer first, teamwork; embrace change, integrity, passion and commitment. 
For example, their first priority is the interest of buyers and sellers. Customers are the sources of the company’s revenues, it is important to maintain their loyalty. They also promote their human resources to embrace entrepreneurship, integrity, and passion in their work. Alibaba trained every of their employees in fulfilling customer satisfaction, the heart of Alibaba’s business.

Alibaba’s Corporate Values


(b) Target Market 
Alibaba is targeting two marketplaces, including an English-based global market to cater to international exporters and importers, as well as the Chinese market, whose goal is to concentrate on suppliers and buyers of local transactions in China as according to Yazdanifard & Tan (2014)(3). China is by far the world's largest Internet market, twice the size of the US market. There are 560 million Internet users spend 20 hours per week online.
Alibaba is also targeted at small and medium-sized private enterprises and individual businessmen, these enterprises have great potential in e-commerce. Alibaba try to gain a huge market share through the development of positioning to different language sites and modify its design and layout to adapt to the local overseas culture in order to locate e-commerce services. For example, English websites are generally targeted at buyers from overseas, while the Chinese website is aimed at Chinese shoppers and Japanese websites for the Japanese market. For the purpose to obtain the highest profits and goals, Alibaba also created a Korean and Spanish website to broaden its market in different areas. All these help to determine Alibaba's global success (4).


Aliexpress.com Japan version

Aliexpress Korea version 


(c) Building an Influential Brand
Alibaba brand has become a well-known brand. Through the powerful effect of word of mouth, this name able achieves global memories. Raising the Alibaba brand's reputation further strengthens the company's ability to establish greater customer base and achieve huge revenue (4).
Jack Ma chose the name of Alibaba, because it is easy to pronounce due to its simple and clear syllables, this helps to improve brand awareness. Besides that, the name “Alibaba” also exists in the famous fairy tale named Alibaba. Alibaba's success determines that the correct name of the business is very crucial (5). From the start of Alibaba, the following business name also follow the trend like Aliexpress, Aliyun, Alipay, and Alimama.


(d) Competent Management Team
Alibaba has capable management team that has high commitment to their corporate culture (6). The superiors behind Alibaba have well-built and strong foundations in e-commerce, Internet, technology, and sourcing industries.





(e) Pricing Strategy
Alibaba offers their customers with different price levels for wider range of products option which depend on the suppliers. Penetration pricing is one of the marketing strategies that Alibaba hints at setting up low prices to raise sales and market share. In addition, Alibaba also offers discounts for the purpose of stimulating sales and retaining customers. If a customer buys a product in bulk as well as during the holiday season will receive discount offers. Buying a free is the best way for sellers to attract customers. After that, value-added services are applied. Even though products are offered at an affordable price, but services such as shipping, instant delivery, warranty, assurance, etc. are added to ensure that the total cost of products with additional services is higher than production cost to make a profit (7).




References
  1. Company Overview. (n.d.). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://www.alibabagroup.com/en/about/overview
  1. Culture and Values. (n.d.). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://www.alibabagroup.com/en/about/culture
  1. Yazdanifard, M. T. H. L. (2014). The review of Alibaba’s online business marketing strategies which navigate them to present success. Global Journal of Management And Business Research, 14(7).
  1. Lai., S.L. (2014). Chinese Entrepreneurship in the Internet Age: Lessons from Alibaba.com (1st ed., pp. 1-7). International Science Index: World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology. Retrieved from http://waset.org/publications/15135/chinese-entrepreneurship-in-the-internet-age-lessons-fromalibaba.com
  1. Doland, A. (2014, September 24). Branding lessons from China's Alibaba. Retrieved Oct 21, 2014, from Ad age: http://adage.com/article/global-news/alibaba-teach-chinese-brands/295115/ 
  1. Leadership. (n.d.). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://www.alibabagroup.com/en/about/leadership
  1. Essays, UK. (March 2015). The Alibaba Group Company Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/marketing/the-alibaba-group-company-analysis-marketing-essay.php


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