1. As a digital retailer, how does Alibaba provide value to Chinese consumers? What sets of values are unique to the Chinese market?
2. Given that Alibaba does not own or distribute any of the merchandise exchanged on its sites, describe what factors had to develop for the company to succeed.
3. Analyze Alibaba's business model relative to all the different forms of digital and online marketing covered in this chapter.
4. Can Alibaba succeed in countries outside of China? Why or why not?
As U.S. consumers rapidly add products to their carts on Amazon, Walmart.com, and various other online retail sites, most have never even heard of Alibaba. But while all the others have gone about building massive online businesses, Alibaba has been hard at work creating an enormous online empire. It has done so with one little advantage-1.3 billion potential customers in its home market. Under the direction of visionary founder Jack Ma, Alibaba has taken a somewhat different approach to e-commerce than its global counterparts, one that has the potential to expand and allow Alibaba to become the most pervasive provider of products and services in the world.