The Tale of Alibaba and Jack Ma
Operations
Though Alibaba is a global player now most of its income is generated from within the Chinese market. Taobao, a consumer-to-consumer platform in the line of eBay and Tmall, an Amazon like platform, are its major operations in China. When Ma launched Taobao, the market was dominated by EachNet, a company in which eBay had invested in. So, how did Taobao surpass EachNet? Taobao offered its services for free while EachNet charged consumers for the use of its platform. Little did anyone know at the time that Ma had already devised a strategy to make real profit. He built AliPay, a payment system similar to PayPal, where sellers will only receive money when the product was delivered. This strategy provided more satisfied customers, and satisfied customers led to more visits to your website. Pretty smart, eh?
