Comment on Yiting Zhang’s blog:

#2 Alibaba shares surge in their NY stock market debut

Title: Alibaba Shares Surge in Their NY Stock Market Debut

Alibaba is the largest e-commerce company in China. Alibaba went public on September 19, 2014 and made it the largest IPO ever in US market, which was 22 billion dollars. From Yiting Zhang’s blog, I got some interesting points. Firstly, Taobao is the biggest online shopping medium under Alibaba, which is responsible for more than 80% of online e-commerce in China. For me, when I was in China, I used to visit Taobao when I had nothing to do even though I did not have something to buy. Taobao is gradually becoming a part of people’s daily life. However, I am surprised that there was no effect on Taobao when Alibaba went public. Why this happened?

Yiting also mentioned Alipay in her blog. Alipay is becoming a more and more common online payment method in China. People can use Alipay to pay for their telephone bill, credit card and other purchases. It’s very convenient and Chinese are more likely to use Alipay rather than giving cash directly. Once I took a taxi in China, the taxi driver asked me if I could pay him by Alipay rather than giving cash to him. I was so surprised about the popularity of Alipay. In this case, I think Yun Ma (Jack Ma) is very successful in building this online payment system. Alipay is a significant part of Alibaba, so I think Yiting found a good point.

In Yiting’s third paragraph, she asks about the reasons why people choose to shop on Taobao. From my perspective, online shopping is very convenient and we don’t need to go to a shopping mall and spend a lot of time on just walking around. Taobao is a unique shopping website which provides customers with a variety of good quality goods. The price is pretty low which can be affordable for most of people, and the quality of the goods is adequate. Also, Taobao provides a lot of goods that are hard to find in the market, so people will easily be attracted by the unique goods.

After reading Yiting’s blog, I have same feelings as her. As Taobao has become an integral part of people’s life, Alibaba should develop this online shopping system in other countries to earn more profits and expand its sales and brand influence. However, I wonder what will happen then if the company goes public and why they choose to go public. Is going public for every company a good thing?

Reference:

This link is about the secret of Taobao’s success:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-18/the-secret-of-taobaos-success

“Alibaba prices stock at $68 US in $22B IPO” CBC News. Web. Sep 18, 2014.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/alibaba-prices-stock-at-68-us-in-22b-ipo-1.2770686