By Loretta Chao
Of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BEIJING (Dow Jones)--Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is planning to expand its business-to-consumer online retail business, even as the burgeoning sector has grown increasingly competitive.
China's e-commerce market is expanding rapidly, with online transactions expected to grow to roughly 7% of China's massive retail market by 2013 from about 2% now, Hong Kong-based Deutsche Bank AG analyst Alan Hellawell said. Business-to-consumer transactions account for just a small portion of the overall market, but analysts said they expect that share to grow as shoppers increasingly look to buy goods online from brands and retailers they recognize.
As part of its efforts to expand its business-to-consumer business, the Hangzhou-based group's online retail company, Taobao.com, said Monday it separated the Taobao Mall business-to-consumer portal http://www.tmall.com/ from its flagship consumer-to-consumer portal and gave it its own web address, Tmall.com.
Users could previously access Taobao Mall, on which vendors including Adidas AG, Fast Retailing Co.'s Uniqlo and Lenovo Group Ltd. sell goods to Chinese consumers, via Taobao.com.
Taobao.com Chief Financial Officer Daniel Zhang said Monday that Taobao Mall listings will still appear in Taobao.com search results, but the move is meant to differentiate the Taobao Mall brand and "give people a very clear idea that this is the first choice to find high-quality products."
He added he expects the value of transactions on Taobao Mall to grow 400% this year from last year, outpacing the growth of Taobao's consumer-to-consumer business. He declined to give a value for such transactions.
Taobao.com, which operates China's largest online retail website, has said it expects to double the value of consumer-to-consumer transactions conducted via its website to CNY400 billion ($59.9 billion) this year.
The separation of the two brands follows Taobao.com's appointment of Ye Peng, formerly chief operating officer of Chinese Internet search company Baidu Inc., as vice president overseeing Taobao Mall.
Research firm Analysys International said sales on Taobao.com accounted for 75% of all e-commerce transactions in China as of the second quarter. But while analysts said they expect Taobao.com to maintain its dominance in the overall market, they say Taobao's competition will intensify.
A number of competing business-to-consumer platforms have emerged in recent years, including 360buy.com, a website operated by Beijing Jingdong Century Trading Co. Amazon.com Inc. also operates a Chinese website, though both are much smaller than Taobao.com in terms of transaction value.
In addition, Baidu is working with Japan's Rakuten Inc. to launch an online shopping mall for Chinese Internet users, hoping to benefit from the search company's massive audience. The two companies plan to jointly invest $50 million in the site over the next three years, though a previous attempt by Baidu to enter the e-commerce market has yet to gain traction among Chinese users.
Taobao Mall will also face challenges from established, specialized websites for sales of goods such as air tickets, which the portal launched earlier this year.
For example, Ctrip.com International Ltd., China's largest online travel booking company, fills its own orders and has full control over its sales policies and service quality, while Taobao Mall, a platform for other merchants, doesn't actually fill orders.
Taobao Mall employs a number of measures to protect consumers, such as verifying the credentials of all of its Taobao Mall merchants and requiring that they all offer a seven-day, no-questions-asked refund policy. But service quality can still vary from merchant to merchant.
Taobao.com, which currently has 50 million daily unique visitors, said it will invest 200 million yuan over the next three months in a marketing campaign for Taobao Mall, including an ad campaign on state broadcaster China Central Television and an offline billboard campaign across major cities in China.
Alibaba Group, in which Yahoo Inc. owns a roughly 40% stake, is the parent of Hong Kong-listed business-to-business trading website Alibaba.com. (1688.HK).
-By Loretta Chao, The Wall Street Journal; 8610 8400 7799; loretta.chao@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101101-704939.html
2010年11月4日星期四
Taobao launches Web search engine
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-10-12 15:31
souce from: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010-10/12/content_11400559.htm
taobao's search engin: http://www.etao.com/
Updated: 2010-10-12 15:31
souce from: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010-10/12/content_11400559.htm
taobao's search engin: http://www.etao.com/
SHANGHAI - A unit of Alibaba Group, China's largest e-commerce firm, has launched a search engine, taking aim at a lucrative market now dominated by Wall Street darling Baidu Inc, Reuters reported on Oct 12.
Taobao.com, China's largest and most popular online e-commerce website with a consumer focus, launched its public beta test of the search site, called Etao, on Oct 9, a spokeswoman said on Oct 12.
"Etao is a shopping search engine launched by Taobao," she said in a statement, referring to the site's name.
Etao provides not only search options for e-commerce, but also a comprehensive search engine powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine.
The move is a direct challenge to reigning Chinese search leader Baidu, which dominates more than 60 percent of the Chinese search market by advertising revenue.
"Advertising to people who have come already to buy something is a very attractive proposition," Mark Natkin, director of consulting firm Marbridge Consulting, said of Etao.
"It (Etao) has the potential to pull a very valuable segment of users, by intention, from Baidu," Natkin said.
Alibaba Group is about 40 percent owned by Yahoo Inc.
China's Internet search market is currently controlled by Baidu and Google, which collectively have about 90 percent of the market.
But Google's share has been slipping since its high profile threat to leave China earlier this year. Chinese Internet firms are jostling with each other to eat into Google's share and compete against Baidu.
In August, Sohu, China's No 2 Internet portal said it will sell 32 percent of its Sogou search engine to investors that include Alibaba Group.
"There's always the potential for a threat to Baidu, but they (Taobao) are still in the early stages," said an analyst with an investment bank who is not authorized to speak with media.
"It may take them at least another three to four years to build up their technology."
Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Bing in China. The firm told the Wall Street Journal in September it is looking for a partner there to help the company play a major role in China's Internet search market -- the world's largest with more than 400 million users
Taobao.com aims for overseas Net sales expansion
By Qian Yanfeng (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-27 11:23
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010-10/27/content_11464512.htmSHANGHAI - China's largest online shopping platform, Taobao.com, said on Tuesday that it plans to expand into the European and American markets by launching a new shopping section at mall.taobao.com for cross-border online shopping at the beginning of next year, allowing Chinese e-consumers to shop beyond the Asian markets.
Chinese Internet users can already buy products online from Japanese vendors, after Taobao's partnership with Yahoo Japan Corp in June launched two online platforms to allow vendors to sell in each other's markets, the first step in its overseas expansion strategy.
The new shopping section will allow European and American brand names to sell their products at mall.taobao.com.
"Following our entry into the Japanese market, we are now preparing to test the waters in the European and American markets. Discussions with European and American brand names are already under way," Lu Peng, vice-president of Strategic Business Development at Taobao, told China Daily on the sidelines at the Cross-Straits E-commerce Conference 2010.
"Chinese consumers have a huge demand and growing purchasing power for overseas products, which spells great potential for cross-border e-commerce, and we think Taobao can play a major role in that," he said.
When launched, the new integrated platform will provide Chinese e-consumers with access to products from several countries, including the United States, Great Britain and Germany, he said.
The company's partnership with Yahoo Japan has also been faring well, said Lu, but he refused to reveal transaction volumes for the platform, which provides users from the two countries with 8 million Japanese and 50 million Chinese product listings.
Lu said the platform would need to upgrade its business-to-consumer (B2C) model by cooperating with bigger and more competitive Japanese companies, instead of small and medium-sized individual shops, to both raise efficiency and provide a wholesale service to Chinese consumers.
The same problem exists in its partnership with Taiwan-based eDynamics, whose B2C e-commerce subsidiary, oBuy, opened a store on Taobao in 2006.
"But with the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) between the mainland and Taiwan earlier this year, cross-Straits cooperation in the e-commerce sector is expected to grow more rapidly," said Lu.
Taobao, a subsidiary of the Chinese online giant Alibaba Group, is China's top e-commerce player, taking 80 percent of the country's online shopping market.
Its move to expand into the overseas market is also intended to attract Chinese consumers, who usually turn to foreign procurement service providers when shopping for non-Asian products, and help regulate the market, he said.
Online shopping in China has boomed in recent years, as the nation's more than 400 million Internet users - the world's biggest online population - become increasingly Internet-savvy.
According to the China Internet Network Information Center, the transaction volume in China's online shopping market reached 250 billion yuan ($37.52 billion) last year.
2010年10月21日星期四
Taobao is establishing its own warehouses in 50 cities of China
淘宝欲在全国50城市自建仓储
2010-10-21 04:52:36 来源: 京华时报(北京)本报讯 (记者 李斌) 社会物流拖住淘宝后腿，淘宝决定自建以求突围。昨天，记者从接近淘宝网的一位可靠消息人士处获悉，淘宝网乃至整个阿里巴巴集团内部已经制定了计划决心自建物流，具体的运作是今明两年淘宝将在全国52个城市陆续建立分仓，以解决掣肘淘宝网发展的物流问题。同时，该人士透露阿里巴巴还将入股部分物流公司并与它们开展仓储方面的合作。不过，该消息人士强调，“淘宝还是不会把手伸到物流业前端去做配送，也不会抢物流公司的饭碗。”
但是目前这些配送中心和分仓还远远无法满足整个淘宝的发展，多数快递公司的扩张速度已经难以与其匹配，进而导致服务品质下降。另一方面，居高不下的物流费用也在很大程度上制约了淘宝网的进一步发展，因此淘宝网不得不亲自涉足物流，所以有人指出阿里巴巴违背了当初许下“绝不做物流”的承诺。对此，在今年阿里巴巴的网商大会上，马云回应称“有的时候，你不去做解决不了问题。现在物流又碰上大问题了。”
Taobao is establishing its own network for delivery
阿里巴巴计划自建全国范围物流网络
2010-10-21 08:54:34 来源: 网易科技报道网易科技讯 10月21日消息，电子商务公司阿里巴巴集团正计划在全国范围内建立一个庞大的物流网络。该集团对目前国内递送服务的质量感到不满，同时希望在迅速增长的国内市场日益加剧的竞争中保持领先地位。
据来自该公司的消息人士透露，阿里巴巴创始人兼主席马云最近在内部战略会议上告诉管理层，未来两年，该集团将在全国52个城市建立分销中心。
据悉，此项物流服务主要是针对淘宝用户，但具体细节尚未公布。淘宝是阿里巴巴未上市的子公司，在中国消费电子商务市场上占有压倒性地位。
据德意志银行分析师阿伦·赫拉维尔表示，淘宝的C2C及B2C平台，市场份额总计达到83.8%。
在淘宝上的购买已占到国内快递公司每日送货量的70%以上；这已经导致了分销与送货的延误以及质量参差不齐，因为国内物流公司没有能力应对电子商务的迅速增长。
面对这一趋势，美国包裹递送公司——联合包裹(UPS)已计划在中国建立国内递送服务。
阿里巴巴集团旗下的淘宝网，也正面临着新的竞争。搜索引擎百度本周与日本最大网上购物商城运营商乐天市场携手推出了一个网上商城网站。
此外，越来越多的外国零售商也开始在中国建立自己的网上购物商城。阿迪达斯选择了在淘宝开设店面，而日本服饰零售商优衣库去年在中国推出了自己的网上商店，其竞争对手Gap将于下月跟进。世界最大零售商沃尔玛也正准备在中国推出自己的电子商务网站。
2010年10月6日星期三
Shops and shopkeepers On tabao
source from http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/sinobytes/post.htm?id=63013693
Navigating the bamboo scaffolding of China's rapid-rising tower of technology by Steven Millward,China
Similarly to eBay, there's an emphasis on shopkeepers being rated by buyers to display who can, and can't, be trusted. The same, too, for buyers. In the screenshot to the right, you can see one shopkeeper's stats, displayed on its shop home screen. After every transaction, both parties can optionally rate each other; but it has become polite to give a good rating where one is due. The more "crowns" and "hearts", the better
Text reviews can also be posted under every product. Interestingly, running a Taobao shop has become a national pastime, with even office workers on a good salary running shops, chatting online with potential customers--perhaps even during office hours--and sorting out the mailing of items in the evenings and on weekends. University students, too, provided they have a laptop, have taken to being sellers to give themselves a bit of an income during the semester. Setting up a Taobao shop requires no fees be paid to the site. So it's just a matter of sourcing for some products from a wholesaler--an easy thing to find and do in China, which is the "world's factory" after all--for a fairly small outlay. And then you'll hopefully be able to sell the goods at a competitive price which slightly undercuts the bricks-and-mortar stores with their huge overheads.
Navigating the bamboo scaffolding of China's rapid-rising tower of technology by Steven Millward,China
Similarly to eBay, there's an emphasis on shopkeepers being rated by buyers to display who can, and can't, be trusted. The same, too, for buyers. In the screenshot to the right, you can see one shopkeeper's stats, displayed on its shop home screen. After every transaction, both parties can optionally rate each other; but it has become polite to give a good rating where one is due. The more "crowns" and "hearts", the better
Text reviews can also be posted under every product. Interestingly, running a Taobao shop has become a national pastime, with even office workers on a good salary running shops, chatting online with potential customers--perhaps even during office hours--and sorting out the mailing of items in the evenings and on weekends. University students, too, provided they have a laptop, have taken to being sellers to give themselves a bit of an income during the semester. Setting up a Taobao shop requires no fees be paid to the site. So it's just a matter of sourcing for some products from a wholesaler--an easy thing to find and do in China, which is the "world's factory" after all--for a fairly small outlay. And then you'll hopefully be able to sell the goods at a competitive price which slightly undercuts the bricks-and-mortar stores with their huge overheads.
Using taobao
source from :http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/sinobytes/post.htm?id=63013693
Navigating the bamboo scaffolding of China's rapid-rising tower of technology by Steven Millward, China
The 10 main tabs across the Taobao front page reveal the core sections of the site, which include "mall", "global", "second-hand", and "plane tickets". Much of what is sold, however, are brand-new products from its legion of hobbyist shopkeepers.
The search box is prominent just above the tabs and allows you to search across the site or within certain categories. Upon searching for anything, you get a list with thumbnails and descriptions, from a variety of sellers across the country. It doesn't really matter where the seller is, as regular- and express-mail options cover the country.
Taobao's payment method is Alipay, created by its parent company Alibaba, the business-to-business e-commerce site which also runs Yahoo's China operations. Alipay has been vital to their victory over eBay and its unfamiliar Paypal. For regular users, Alipay (Chinese name: 支付宝--Zhīfùbǎo) is the payment method and safety intermediary. It accepts payment on a wide variety of bank-issued debit cards and Visa.
The buyer first pays money--using an Internet shopping-enabled bank card--to Alipay, which then holds the money until the buyer has received the goods. If satisfied with the items, the buyer logs back into Taobao, and with a few clicks, can allow Alipay to pass on the payment to the seller. This eliminates the possibility of card fraud and items that don't get sent. Though for the shopkeepers, there's still the possibility of some wantonly dishonest customers damaging the goods themselves and sending them back.
Navigating the bamboo scaffolding of China's rapid-rising tower of technology by Steven Millward, China
The 10 main tabs across the Taobao front page reveal the core sections of the site, which include "mall", "global", "second-hand", and "plane tickets". Much of what is sold, however, are brand-new products from its legion of hobbyist shopkeepers.
The search box is prominent just above the tabs and allows you to search across the site or within certain categories. Upon searching for anything, you get a list with thumbnails and descriptions, from a variety of sellers across the country. It doesn't really matter where the seller is, as regular- and express-mail options cover the country.
Taobao's payment method is Alipay, created by its parent company Alibaba, the business-to-business e-commerce site which also runs Yahoo's China operations. Alipay has been vital to their victory over eBay and its unfamiliar Paypal. For regular users, Alipay (Chinese name: 支付宝--Zhīfùbǎo) is the payment method and safety intermediary. It accepts payment on a wide variety of bank-issued debit cards and Visa.
The buyer first pays money--using an Internet shopping-enabled bank card--to Alipay, which then holds the money until the buyer has received the goods. If satisfied with the items, the buyer logs back into Taobao, and with a few clicks, can allow Alipay to pass on the payment to the seller. This eliminates the possibility of card fraud and items that don't get sent. Though for the shopkeepers, there's still the possibility of some wantonly dishonest customers damaging the goods themselves and sending them back.
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