Alipay business plan | Course Paper

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1 INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 1

2 EXECTUTIVE SUMMARY …………………………………………………………………………. 3

3 THE ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT MARKETING SITUATION ………………… 4

4 STP ANALYSIS ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7

5 IMPLEMENT MARKETING MIX ……………………………………………………………….. 9

6 FINANCIAL ANALYSIS …………………………………………………………………………… 13

7 RECOMMENDATIONS …………………………………………………………………………….. 15

1 INTRODUCTION

Alibaba Group Holding Limited founded in 1999, it is a Chinese multinational

conglomerate. Their businesses are comprised of core commerce, cloud computing, digital media

and entertainment, innovation initiatives and others. Subsidiaries of Alibaba Group are including

Alibaba.com, Taobao, Tmall, UCWeb, AliExpress, Juhuasuan.com, 1688.com, Alimama.com,

Ant Financial, Cainiao, Lazada, Youku, Tudou, and Alibaba Cloud.

GROUP’S MISSION: “To make it easy to do business anywhere.”

Alipay is one of their product that belong to Ant Financial Service. It keeps the largest

market share (54.1%) as the first third-party online payment platform formed in China (China’s

third-party … in Q4, 2017). Alipay is one of the early products of Alibaba Group. It is even older

than Ant Financial, whose it is belong. Alipay provides an efficient online payment solution for

many businesses under the Alibaba Group, especially online shopping platforms. Sharing the

Loyal customers from the online shopping platform is one of Alipay’ competitive advantages.

This even affects our daily life. As common knowledge, the third-party online payment platform

is a solution to online purchasing. It is different from the other types of online payments because

third-party payment platform operated by the organizations with strong capital power and

credibility.

1.1 Objectives

The objective of this report is to make a marketing plan of Alipay, the most important

product of Alibaba Group, and enhance it by improve the self-educational feature of it.

1.2 Report structure

The report contains six sections:

1. Introduction

2. Executive Summary

3. The Analysis of The Current Marketing Situation

4. STP Analysis

5. Implement Marketing Mix

6. Financial analysis

7. Recommendations

1. For the first introduction part, the report presents the background and industry of Alibaba

Group, its mission statement and marketing objectives. In addition, it includes the objectives

and structure of the report.

2. The second part is executive summary, which summarized the contents of the report and

possible implementation.

3. The third part is the analysis of the current marketing situation. This part contains the

opportunities and threats which the enhanced Alipay will face, the SWOT analysis, and the

analysis of external and internal.

4. In forth part, the report provides the STP analysis to show the customer segments, target and

position about the enhance Alipay.

5. The fifth part provides the implement marketing mix of the enhanced Alipay, including the

analysis of 4P, the marketing personal required, and the ways to obtain support for the

enhanced Alipay.

6. The sixth part is financial analysis, which indicate the possible ways to earn revenue and

predict financial statement for the next 5 years.

7. The last part of the report is recommendations, which discuss the possible key successful or

failure factors to the marketing plan. This part also provides the evaluation and control

methods that base on marketing metrics, gives the conclusion for the study as well.

2 EXECTUTIVE SUMMARY

The business plan is for Alipay’s education function. Although Alipay already has a

complete functional framework. However, there are still some developing possibilities in some

perspectives. For example, the educational function. To make Alipay complete its functional

framework, we developed this business report.

First, we analyzed the current marketing situations. We believe that although Alipay now

faces some threats and weaknesses, such as government restrictions, market competition and data

security, it still has many opportunities and strengths in the market. With Alipay’s huge market

share in the existing business and the future development of overseas businesses, we believe that

educational service as a new function of Alipay has a good development prospect in the future.

Then, we used STP analysis to determine target market and positioned the product. After that, we

developed relevant marketing strategies. The implement marketing mix includes 4P analysis and

implement actions. In addition, we refer to financial analysis of some existing education industry

companies, made a prediction of budget for marketing promotional activities and return of

marketing investment analysis.

3 THE ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT MARKETING SITUATION

Strengths:

Alipay has gained a huge market share as the first mover of online payment App. According

to Hui, the value of the transactions on Alipay reached 5,966.6 billion RMB, and its market

owned 46.057% marketing share in 2013, the volume of the transactions was over 1,620 billion

in 2014 (Hui, B, 2016). As far as my knowledge, more than 80% people around me are using

Alipay and it has become the habit of paying for most of Chinese. Consumers can pay by

scanning or showing the QR code to the cashier, which is more convenient and safer than

carrying cash. Alipay also does not charge any fee to customers on paying. For individual users,

it’s free to withdraw no more than 20,000 RMB for free, and Alipay would charge 0.1% each

transaction after the users have withdrawn more than 20,000 RMB totally. The policy of

withdrawing fees is more beneficial to the users compared to the payment function of WeChat.

Alipay has developed and enhanced so many functions, which covered a variety of businesses,

and it has brought the convenience for its users. Simultaneously, the way of payment is

innovative for Chinese customers. Taobao, the biggest online shopping App, is run by Alibaba,

supports only one online payment App, which is Alipay. If the customers want to but things

through Taobao, they will pay first, and Alipay will keep the payment from the customers until

the customers make sure they received the satisfied products, the Alipay will transfer the money

to the sellers. Alipay guarantees the safety of customers payment, which has built a good image

for users. Good image and reputation has become one of the essential strengths of Alipay.

Weakness:

The huge market share has drawn the attention of Chinese government. Chinese

government has imposed some restrictions and policies on Alipay. For example, the fund, which

users could invest through Alipay directly, has been restricted. On the other hand, Alipay is not

safe enough, criminals could access to the users’ account by stealing the users’ private

information. In some cases, the uses can change the process of payment with passwords to the

payment without passwords, like DiDi, the other prevalent App in China. This kind of setting

and operation give the persons except the users themselves some chances to steal money from

your account. Lacking supervisor is another weakness of Alipay. At some points Alipay is like a

internet bank, but there is no third party supervising this internet bank like other commercial