When I was reading Stella’s blog, an article about T-mall drew my attention. T-mall (Alibaba) is the biggest e-commerce brand in China. In this upcoming November 11th, there’s the event that gives consumers discounts on products and free worldwide shipping.
Stella has mentioned how this promotion could help Alibaba to increase public awareness and increase profits. (The research shows Alibaba has the sales of 35.1 billion for 2013/11/11) I totally agree with her thoughts about Alibaba: Alibaba is a successful e-commerce business, and they do SMART promotions.
However, besides having special events, I think Alibaba should also improve its quality in order to compete with its competitors, such as Amazon. Alibaba provides large varieties of products and its main value proposition is to provide extremely cheap prices to maintain its current consumers and attract potential customers (which means Alibaba is a cost focus business). The price is relative to the products’ quality positively; the brand is having the reputation of selling cheap, poor quality products. Moreover, since Alibaba is the combination of stores opened by random individuals, it’s hard for Alibaba to find each poor quality goods store. Alibaba should higher its standard for individuals to sell on its website; this can help Alibaba get rid of the bad reputation and also improve its overall quality.
References:
– Picture: http://txws.cztv.com/rdtp/2013/10/2013-10-164099623.htm