Alibaba first took hold of the e-commerce market in May of 2003 with Taobao and its highly lucrative subsidiary, TMall. After claiming over 30% of the market share of e-commerce in China, Alibaba has started expanding into associated markets.
Alibaba recently launched ETao.com, a search engine for e-commerce websites in China which includes product listings and prices. 360buy.com, a Chinese competitor of Taobao, has responded to this by blocking their website from being listed on the search engine, though product listings are still present. Alibaba has also announced plans for Alipay to go global, putting it in direct competition with eBay’s PayPal as the premiere online payment platform. Alipay is already the world’s largest online payment platform with over 600 million users and by expanding globally Alipay may soon tower over its Google-born competitor PayPal.
In an effort to compete for customers in the group buy market, Alibaba has said it has plans to enhance its Juhuasuan Daily-Deal service and launch it from its Taobao B2C platform. China’s daily-deal market was recently recorded by The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) as having 42.2 million users during the first half of 2011 in China. Alibaba’s aggressive expansion into the market makes it clear that they intend on moving in swiftly.
Further Reading:
E-Commerce Site 360Buy Blocks Alibaba’s Product Search Engine
Rumor: Alipay Going Global, a Huge Online Payment Threat to Paypal
Alibaba to Spin Off Its Juhuasuan Daily-Deal Business
Report: 42.2 Million Chinese Use Daily Deals Sites [STATS]