Alibaba is competing successfully with Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and other international online retailers

The segment of global e-commerce is growing rapidly, making this sector a great platform for starting and running a successful online business. As InternetRetailer.com statistics shows, the total volume of global e-commerce sales in 2015 is close to $1.7 trillion, which is equal to 7.3% of all retail sales. Such an intense growth of this segment can be attributed to the rise of cross-border transactions, conducted with the help of such major platforms as AliExpress which gives millions of customers the much desired opportunity to purchase top quality products at sensible cost.

Alibaba Group as the driver of global ecommerce

Alibaba Group, a private Chinese company established by Jack Ma in 1999, is considered to be one of the most successful e-commerce companies in the world. Thanks to the high level of retail and payment systems development and a user-friendly search engine, the company enjoys incredible revenues and is said to handle more e-commerce operations than Amazon.com and eBay combined. One of the most prominent subsidiaries of the company is AliExpress, a marketplace that makes it possible for small and mid-sized Chinese businesses to interact directly with their potential clients and make sales with no intermediaries. Being a retailer that has a deep understanding of the market, featuring billions of products and using a low retail price as a competitive advantage, the webstore is considered to be one of the most visited websites in the world. AliExpress website is also available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hebrew, and several other languages, which makes it convenient for customers worldwide to register, communicate with the sellers, and place their orders. This is vital since the number of foreign website users, especially of the purchasers from Russia, Brazil and the United States, is rising rapidly, and, moreover, the platform is offering the clients an astonishing opportunity to become an AliExpress affiliate.

Alibaba Group going global

The story of Alibaba’s success, undoubtedly, has started with the Chinese customers who are believed to do more online shopping than any other customers in the world. But these days Alibaba benefits from having a huge customer base and targeting clients all over the world – the company is actively exploring the opportunity of doing business on a global scale. The company’s representatives have stated on numerous occasions that Alibaba will invest considerable sums of money into managing and creating new ventures abroad. It was also mentioned that Alibaba global expansion is the retailer’s top priority since Jack Ma, the company’s founder and execute chairman, has set out a goal for the company to last at least for 100 years. This opens up some exceptionally bright prospective for AliExpress which core aim is to connect Chinese retailers and global customers effortlessly.

Alibaba Group performance

As of December 31, 2015, Alibaba Group is said to have an ‘outstanding’ quarter in terms of the company’s achievements and financial performance. According to the company representatives, the company stays focused on such strategic goals as:

• Enhancing global imports;
• Making rural expansion possible;
• Increasing its presence in major Chinese cities;
• Establishing a world-class cloud computing business.

In the fourth quarter of 2015 the company has shown an incredible performance that could be seen from the following statistics:

• Revenue – $5.333 million
• Revenue growth – 32% year-on-year
• Mobile revenue – $2.894 million,
• Mobile revenue growth – 192% year-on-year
• Cash flow – $3.7 billion
• Active buyers – 407 million
• Mobile monthly active users – 393 million.

As the company representatives explain, the growth in core performance indicators is due to an increase of users who access the platform with the use of mobile devices, which, in turn, is the result of a successful marketing and promotional efforts.