Case Study on Alibabas Taobao

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Case Study on Alibaba’s Taobao

Section A: GROUP 4

Members –

Ajmera Karan Rajesh(12DCP-006)

Akul Kailwoo(12DCP-009)

Amit Dugar(12DCP-013)

Dhruv Goyal(12DCP-032)

Harsh Chaudhry(12DCP-044)

HimanshuSinghal(12DCP-045)


INTRODUCTION

Alibaba Group is a privately owned Hangzhou-based family of Internet-based businesses that cover business-to-business online marketplaces, retail and payment platforms, shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. Its products and services are designed to make the benefits of the Internet accessible to small businesses, entrepreneurs and consumers. It operates primarily in the People’s Republic of China.

Alibaba Group, its subsidiaries and affiliates:

  • Alibaba.com - provider of on-line marketplaces facilitating international and domestic China trade for small businesses (B2)
  • Tmall- business-to-consumer (B2C) on-line retail marketplace
  • Taobao Marketplace- consumer-to-consumer (C2C) on-line shopping platform
  • eTao - search engine designed for on-line shoppers
  • Alibaba Cloud Computing - advanced data-centric cloud computing services platform
  • China Yahoo! - one of China's leading internet portals
  • Alipay - third-party on-line paymeintront platform

If Amazon.com is the paragon of a successful model for an online B2C (business-to-consumer) business, then surely China’s Alibaba.com must be its B2B (business-to-business) equivalent.

HOW  TAOBAO  BESTED  E-BAY  IN  CHINA

The challenge

 When Ebay launched in China it had global revenues of more than $2bn. As a young, domestic entity, Taobao was taking on a huge rival while also fending off many similar small competitors in the sector, where barriers to entry were low.

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The strategic response

Noting that Ebay in China was charging users to list products and services, Taobao allowed them to list for free in order to build a big cohort of sellers and buyers. Critical mass would eventually attract revenue-generating activities, such as online advertisements.

Taobao also presented itself as very much a Chinese enterprise. For instance, the screen names of online moderators were derived from characters in popular Chinese kung-fu novels.

Next, Taobao aimed to be more innovative than Ebay in customer service. In 2003 Taobao started Aliwangwang, its instant communication tool, to help buyers and sellers interact.

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