Questions for Discussion
1. As a digital retailer, how does Alibaba provide value to Chinese consumers? What sets of values are
unique to the Chinese market?
– They are providing the Chinese consumers lower prices, a lot of options and high-quality shopping
experience. Alibaba offers the standard products as well as investment opportunities.
2. Given that Alibaba does not own or distribute any of the merchandise exchanged on its sites, describe
what factors had to develop for the company to succeed.
– Business and marketing strength.
3. Analyze Alibaba’s business model relative to all the different forms of digital and online marketing
covered in this chapter.
– Websites: They offer Tmall.com, which pairs customers with big corporation. Also they use Alipay – a
service similar to PayPal.
– Social Media Marketing: They use a lot of social media for marketing. China is a very big market, so
they take advantage of this.
4. Can Alibaba succeed in countries outside of China? Why or why not?
– It can. There are a lot of poor countries, such as ours, and it’s reliable for many people to get stuff from
Alibaba.