Chinese e-commerce giant - Alibaba Group

Alibaba.com is an e-commerce site that connects Chinese suppliers with buyers at home and abroad. Today, Alibaba Group is involved in a variety of Web businesses. Its most important elements are its online retail sites: Taobao Marketplace, a large commerce site; Tmall, an online marketplace for name-brand retailers like Apple; and Juhuasuan, a daily deals site similar to Groupon. The company is also affiliated to mobile payments service called AliPay, and it has investments in online video, mobile messaging and cloud computing, among other businesses. The company that started in 1999 by Jack Ma, a former teacher from his apartment in his hometown of Hangzhou, now employs 24,000 workers at its headquarters in Hangzhou and elsewhere, with 25 separate business units. 

An On-Offline Revolution

A successful retail supply chain must manage the flows of information, product and funds effectively. Retailers want to show customers all the product variety they have to offer, and customers, in turn, gain from knowing if a specific product is available in stock. While an online retailer can help online customers search through a wide variety of products, it cannot access customers who are not online.

Using the online channel, it also cannot provide sensory information that is only available once a product is seen, touched and felt. In contrast, a small local retailer cannot carry a wide variety of products and is often forced to convince customers to buy what is available.

Imagine a future where the local retailer carries the most popular variants of product, while its online partner carries all the others. The local retailer is linked to the online retailer’s website through a simple store computer. The combination of the local and online retailers is able to provide all the information a customer desires.

Ways to Promote Your Product or Service

Your marketing budget deserves careful consideration, because it not only serves to create market impressions; it is expected to generate revenues. Understanding the kinds of impacts that can be expected from various print and electronic media will help to manage this element of business expense.

It is important to understand that each market segment may react differently to the way a promotional message is presented. An exciting, aggressive or even humorous message may be perceived as offensive or insensitive even though it may be grammatically and politically correct.

The Print and Graphic Arts Media

Business cards and stationery are effective, inexpensive and professional promotional tools but use of these items should be restricted to personal contacts. Rubber stamps or staples are for impersonal, routine tasks and should not be used in any way with this media. Advertising specialties such as pens, key rings and calendars acknowledge goodwill in the form of a small gift, but these convey more image than information.