According to the Wall Street Journal that Alibaba group set a record Nov.11th (a national Single’s Day in China) on China’s largest online shopping day as its marketplaces hosted $9.3 billion in sales.  It is a enormous sales record in history that makes many businesses begin to try to access with Alibaba’s operation model.

I came across an article about many famous department stores in States accept Alipay to woo rich Chinese Shoppers. Alipay is a payment tool that works as Paypay but more popular in China. One of the reasons that Alibaba reached such a big sales record is benefit from the convenient payment process of Alipay. However, I doubt about the effectiveness that those famous merchandise stores’ online shopping strategy by accepting Alipay. As a Chinese, also from the experiences I had from shopping on Alibaba, I clearly know that Alibaba got the sales record because of the big population in China and ideal discount of common goods. Take an example, as I know, during this Nov 11th online shopping day, people can even get a ideal price for a camera below $100 CAD. I don’t think the same strategy will work on those famous merchandise stores. First of all, those stores mainly sell luxury goods which means it is still expensive even they sells at a big discount. Most of Chinese online shoppers could not afford it. Secondly, since Alipay is a Chinese payment tool, it may increase the variable costs by accessing it, which is not worth to do that.

Therefore, even E-commerce is the hottest business model nowadays, it is not a proper way to mimic the sales model of Alibaba.

Read more about Alibaba sales record on Singles’Day : http://online.wsj.com/articles/alibaba-breaks-singles-day-record-1415686357

Can’t buy me love: Alibaba make $1 billion in 17 minutes of “Singles Day” http://mashable.com/2014/11/10/alibaba-singles-day-china-black-friday/