Monday, November 23, 2015

Alibaba Strengthens International Market Presence After Singles Day


Alibaba's massive sales on Singles' Day shows its power in the e-commerce market.

Alibaba Group Holding just broke its own Singles’ Day record this year. The Chinese e-commerce giant beat the analysts’ expectations by generating sales worth more than $14 billion in a single day. This was a huge day for it as in only 24 hours, it created history.
In the past two to three years, same results have contributed in making Singles’ Day the biggest one-day online shopping festival of the year. The previous biggest one-day online shopping festival was US’s Cyber Monday, which could only generate $1.53 billion last year.
Alibaba Group was quite satisfied with the numbers regardless of falling down on the stock market. According to Business Insider, Singles’ Day was an international success. The company aimed to make it a successful international event and for that matter, it teamed up with more than 20,000 international retailers to sell their items on its online platforms, such as Taobao and Tmall.com. Overall, the one-day event was a phenomenal success and showed the power of Alibaba in the e-commerce market.
Scott Devitt, a Stifel analyst, wrote in a note, “CEO Daniel Zhang noted that cross-border gross merchandise volume (GMV) generated in the first two minutes this year exceed the total cross-border GMV generated during the entire 24 hour period last year, a positive indicator of international traction.”
Jack Ma has been trying for a long time to make the company’s international market presence stronger but has not been effective up till now. Alibaba invested and operated many businesses in the United States but it could not make an impact in the US tech sector, which is currently the biggest tech market of the world.
However, Mr. Ma believes that this might be the other way to turn the tables in his favor. The top countries outside China that ordered the packages from Alibaba’s online marketplace include Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States.
According to an analyst at Suntrust, Robert Peck, at least one third of the online shoppers at Alibaba made purchases from international companies. He added, “The real importance is this is the first time they have had a lot of international brands on the platforms. This is their chance to introduce Chinese consumers to these international brands.”  
Therefore, Alibaba proved once again that it is more than just a Chinese organization. It also had a televised party in which various celebrities featured including the most popular character Daniel Craig from James Bond and Kevin Spacey from House of Cards.  


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