Monthly Archives: September 2014

The official roadshow video for Alibaba

As is shown in the video, Alibaba is one of the most successful companies in China over the past 15 years. It has changed the way of shopping for Chinese by providing large online-shopping platforms: Taobao and Tmall.

Aibaba went public is US on 19 September 2014.

Now Alibaba is deciding to expand its business and become a global company——starting with going public in US. It priced shares on Thursday, Sep 18 for its initial public offering at $68 each, putting the finishing touches on the largest IPO for a U.S.-listed company ever. Also, it started day valued at $167.62bn, bigger than Amazon and eBay.

There is a huge market for online-shopping in China and Alibaba grasped the opportunity. Instead of directly selling and shipping goods to customers, Alibaba offers online platforms where small businessmen and businesswomen can “rent” an online shop and sell their goods in it. Since the cost of running a shop online is much lower than that of running a brick and mortar shops, the prices of goods are quite cheap.

Alibaba’s success in China is not only because of the enormous purchasing power in China, but only because it has been providing customers what they want. Most of the Chinese people had lots of concerns about online-shopping. Alibaba has its own instant online chatting system so that customers can ask sellers about the commodities first before purchasing. In contrast, the American company, eBay, failed to grasp the importance of the Chinese concept.

Wild West’ of groundwater:

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/wild-west-of-groundwater-billion-dollar-nestlé-extracting-b-c-s-drinking-water-for-free-1.587568

Nestlé is taking advantages from government regulation and getting water resources for free.

Nestlé is paying nothing for taking underground water from HOPE, which violates business ethics and affects local people’s life. Nestlé, as a world famous corporation, is risking its reputation and image for taking free water resource.

As is discussed in Comm101’s class, an entrepreneur should understand the value proposition of that business and never take advantage of vulnerable people. Personally, business ethics is related to a company’s image, its social responsibility and the public’s welfare. Company violating business ethics for profit is damaging its reputation and will lose advantages in the competitive market, and this is especially true for Nestlé as the problem have been discussed for years. Since customers always buy products and services from companies that they consider trustworthy, Nestlé will probably keep losing its customers in the future. Hence, such behavior will be supervised and regulated In the long run.

Furthermore, the lack of regulation is a major reason for the problem. The government of BC should establish profound laws to stop water resources from being taken for free.

To sum up, I believe companies must observe business ethics for the sake of development (both of themselves and the community). What’s more, the government should perfect related regulations to provide a healthy business environment.

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