Alibaba Group Holding Limited was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma as an ecommerce company to facilitate sales among companies that provide consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business products that are sold via the Internet. As the world's largest ecommerce platform, Alibaba is on a path to realizing its vision of facilitating $1 trillion in product sales annually as it also pursues a goal of reaching 2 billion consumers. The company is headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, has a revenue of more than US$23 billion (primarily via advertisements on its sites), and employs about 51,000 people.

Alibaba's global supply chains are constrained tremendously on "Singles Day" or Guanggun Jie, a Chinese holiday celebrated on November 11, the solitary ones of the date-11.11-suggesting "bare branches," the common slang for singles in China. On this day alone, more than $20 billion in sales, or more than 300 million orders, take place on Alibaba's Internet platforms (e.g., Tmall, Taobao). When global retailers think of mega-sales online, they generally think of Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but they ought to be watching 11.11 closely as well, especially as 11.11 doubles the combined sales of those U.S. ecommerce holidays.

Each year, Alibaba handles more than 80 percent of China's ecommerce business. The company now operates in 190 countries. Moving forward, the vision for Alibaba is simple: Bring in non-Chinese brands to the Chinese market and expand products to customers outside of China's borders. So far, the impact is clear. Beyond its own employees, Jack Ma claims that Alibaba has created more than 30 million jobs in China related to companies that sell their products on the Alibaba ecommerce platforms. Ma has also committed to create 1 million new jobs in the United States. With such a large scope, the global supply chains that Alibaba facilitates have to be top-notch, innovative, and always pushing the boundaries for what can be done in delivering products from manufacturers to consumers.

Alibaba does this by focusing on a differentiation strategy, partner connections, buyer protection, mobile technology, and large-scale product selections. Alibaba's differentiation strategy entails operating as an intermediary, connecting buyers and sellers while largely avoiding the need for maintaining capital-intensive warehouses and depots. Partnering with Alibaba enables small manufacturers and suppliers to reach thousands, and likely tens of thousands, of new customers. Importantly, in these buyer-seller exchanges, Alibaba emphasizes buyer protection. That is, if a customer is not satisfied for any reason, they can make a refund request. This consumer focus also carries over to how customers interact with the company. Alibaba has seamlessly adapted its ecommerce sites to mobile platforms, an important part of its strategy given that more than 80 percent of sales are done via mobile devices. The large-scale product selection that can be found on the Alibaba platforms has resulted in some 15 billion products being sold annually and 15 million packages being shipped daily (compared with 5 billion items on Amazon and 3 million packages per day).

Questions

1. According to Alibaba's promotional efforts and strategic initiatives, Alibaba is on a path to realizing its vision of facilitating $1 trillion in product sales annually as it also pursues a goal of reaching 2 billion consumers. It is already the world's largest ecommerce platform. Can one company really achieve $1 trillion in sales and reach 2 billion of the world's 7 billion people?

2. Each year, Alibaba handles more than 80 percent of China's ecommerce business. The company now operates in 190 countries (only 196 countries and 61 territories exist in the world). Moving forward, the vision for Alibaba sounds simple: Bring in non-Chinese brands to the Chinese market and expand products to customers outside of China's borders. Do you think this global strategy is viable?

3. The large-scale product selection that can be found on the Alibaba platforms has resulted in some 15 billion products being sold annually and 15 million packages being shipped daily (compared with 5 billion items on Amazon and 3 million packages per day). This puts tremendous pressure on global supply chains. Can the supply chains continuously facilitate the increased demand that we, as customers, place on the system?