Alibaba.com The brainchild of Jack Ma, Alibaba began in 1999 and grew over the next decade to become the world's largest online B2B marketplace and Asia's most popular online auction site. Its numbers are staggering. The $9 billion company has 43 million registered users (35 million in China and 10.5 million internationally) and hosts more than 5.5 million shop fronts; at any moment, more than 4 million businesses are trading. At Alibaba's heart are two B2B Web sites: alibaba.com, a marketplace for companies around the globe to buy and sell in English, and china Alibaba, a domestic Chinese marketplace .The Chinese powerhouse has a nationalist agenda: to build markets for China's vast number of small and medium-sized businesses. Alibaba enables these businesses to trade with each other and link to global supply chains. To establish customer trust, the company set up Trust-Pass, in which users pay Alibaba a fee to hire a third party that verifies them. Users must have five people vouch for them and provide a list of all their certificates/business licenses. Anyone on Alibaba who has done business with a user is encouraged to comment on the firm, in the same way buyers comment on sellers in Amazon. com's or eBay's marketplace. Businesses are even starting to print "Trust-Pass" on their business cards, a true sign of Alibaba's B2B credibility. Global growth has become a priority. Home pages in Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Russian were launched in 2008 to complement Chinese and U.S. options. After its IPO of $1.7 billion in 2007 (second only to Google's among Internet firms), Alibaba, says Jack Ma, will "create the e-commerce platform for 10 million small enterprises creating 100 million jobs around the world and providing an online retail platform to supply the everyday needs of 1 billion people. The effect of these mechanisms is to make prices more transparent. For undifferentiated products, price pressure will increase. For highly differentiated products, buyers will gain a better picture of the items' true value. Suppliers of superior products will be able to offset price transparency with value transparency; suppliers of undifferentiated products will need to drive down their costs in order to compete. Sources: Kotler and Keller (2012). Marketing Management. (14th edition)

QUESTION 1 (40 Marks) 1.1. E-marketing is the modern approach to the principle of direct marketing, with online marketing as its fastest growing form, with the digital age every business is using e-commerce and Alibaba.com is not an exception. Using the extract and other examples, discuss in detail the ways by which companies can conduct online marketing. (20 marks)

1.2. For most companies like Alibaba.com, the first step is conducting online marketing is to create a corporate and then a marketing website. B2B marketers also make good use of marketing Websites, the key strategy is to create enough value and excitement to get customers to visit the websites. Describe the elements of an effective marketing web site like Alibaba.com. (10 marks)

1.3. Online marketing continues to offer both great promises and challenges for the future. Discuss the challenges and benefits of online marketing a firm like Alibaba.com is likely to face in the industry. (10 marks) QUESTION 2 (20 Marks) Parasuraman, Zeithami and Berry formulated a service quality that identifies five gaps that causes unsuccessful service delivery. Using a government hospital institution of your choice as an example, discuss how the organisation can utilise GAPS Model to satisfy its customers, the general public.

QUESTION 3 (20 Marks) Attractiveness of an industry is measured by means of Porter's five forces model. As a marketing manager of recently established telecommunication company in South Africa, discuss the major forces the company is expected to face in this new environment.

QUESTION 4 (20 Marks) Differentiation is the key to a successful service brand. Assuming you are the marketing manager of "The holiday inn " a five star hotel in Cape town, discuss how you would develop a winning service differentiation strategy in the hotel industry.

QUESTION 5 (20 Marks) Customers do not perceive quality in a unidimensional manner, instead, judge quality based on multiple factors relevant to the context. With reference to the above, fully discuss, with the aid of practical examples, the five dimensions and determinants of service quality as perceived by customer when purchasing services.