Founded in 1999, Alibaba Group has quickly emerged as the largest Chinese e-commerce company and transactions on its online sites totalled US$248 billion in 2014, more than those of eBay and Amazon.com combined.
The company primary operates in China and provides C2C (consumer-to-consumer), B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business) sales services via web portals.
With its’ IPO (initial public offering) on NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) in September 2014, the company is expanding into the global e-commerce market.
Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. As Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma said: “Today the Internet can help small businesses sell things cross the oceans, cross the nations. And I hope that we can serve 2 billion consumers, we can help 10 million small businesses outside China.”
Assignment Questions:
(i) How Alibaba Group has made it easy to do business in China and hence achieved great success?
(ii) Can the company replicate its China strategies elsewhere as it expands into other countries and achieve competitive advantages in the global e-commerce market?
Research information (e.g. academic articles, newspapers and other media outlets) relevant to the case and answer the case questions through reference to relevant theoretical concepts and frameworks introduced in the lecture program. A reference list of at least 20 references evenly distributed across all sources is required.