Alibaba: A Case Study on Building an International Imperium on Information and E-Commerce

The Alibaba Group is a group of internet based businesses with a mission to make it easy for anyone to buy or sell anything, anywhere in the world, but especially to make Chinese businesses more open and accessible for the world. The revenue of the Alibaba Group is running high, since they achieve more sales than their competitors Ebay and Amazon.com together. Alibaba is the first company to make market information and data available for free to all the users, all over the world. Customers/providers of goods can expand the reach of their business quickly. In addition, the connection system of Alibaba and how they connect business people with suppliers is fascinating. Their business strategy has made them both well-known and successful in Asia already. Alibaba’s international interest is to get more access to popular Western brands, especially high-end and luxury brands, given the huge unmet demand among Chinese consumers for products that are not yet available in China. For that matter, it is likely that Alibaba will become a successful brand for retailers all over the world for selling their products and since the world is getting smaller, perhaps even for B2B or C2C markets.