Alibaba's strategic drift

It is fundamental in both a theoretical and practical sense, to analyse the strategies of successful e-businesses who were formulated and operated alongside incumbent competitors. Thus, there have been an array of strategic arguments concerning the rapidly-burgeoning virtual powerhouse Alibaba, who amidst a sea of fortified competitors, found their ground to become one of the most prominent e-businesses of the decade. At the commencing stages, Alibaba lacked a specific strategic goal, aside from the ethnic-originated ecology scheme. Further mishaps arose even after the take-off stage, when Alibaba opted to adhere to the diversification strategy, an evidently unusual phase for a virtual firm. Hence, it is the subject of common debate as to whether Alibaba cited a definitive strategic goal which guided their progress, or whether they were merely the product of a breakneck growth in the Chinese economy. This research will show how a leading e-Commerce company Alibaba has built B2B/C2C business portal Taobao/TMall and has transformed its transaction system from zhifubao into yuerbao and how it propelled Alipay to become a leading financial institution in the thriving digital market. In addition, strategic diversification on Chinese digital business will be examined through Alibaba case

Developing a Leading Digital Multi-sided Platform: Examining IT Affordances and Competitive Actions in Alibaba.com

In recent times, digital multi-sided platforms (DMSPs) have revolutionized electronic commerce by enabling new forms of competition and collaboration. Existing studies provide useful insights yet do not recognize the role of information technologies (IT) in examining the development of DMSPs. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a case study of Alibaba.com (henceforth simply Alibaba), the largest online B2B marketplace in the world with over 80 million members. We applied the theoretical notion of IT affordances to examine the possibilities for competitive action at a platform level based on organizational variables and IT features in the context of the environment in which they function. Our findings show that, toward market leadership, Alibaba has developed competitive actions from actualizing IT affordances. At Alibaba, actualizing IT affordances links closely with its defined organizational goals of developing: (1) a collectivist structure, (2) a coopetitive structure, and (3) an autonomous community among platform constituents. Our stage-wise model captures the relational aspects of IT affordances and proposes actionable prescriptions for a DMSP to achieve market leadership

Concern for Information Privacy and Online Consumer Purchasing in China

Individuals’ concern for information privacy (CFIP) impacts beliefs, intentions, and behaviors in a variety of contexts, including consumer electronic commerce. Most empirical studies on the impact of CFIP on electronic commerce have been conducted using consumers in the United States. Despite China’s growing economy and increasing importance in the global economy, to date, there has been no empirical study of CFIP’s impact on Chinese consumers’ willingness to engage in transactions online. The purpose of this study is to test a widely-referenced model of CFIP’s role in consumer e-commerce in the context of China. We conducted surveys of Chinese consumers’ willingness to engage in transactions with two online merchants, a familiar merchant (Taobao) and a less-familiar merchant (Amazon). For both merchants, CFIP had only mediated impacts on consumers’ willingness to transact with online merchants. While there were similarities between our results and those reported in the original study, there were also differences. Our findings provide a number of contributions for research and practice