The Worldwide Battle for e$-$commerce Read the case study and answer the questions that follow. e$-$commerce, or $$electronic commerce,$$ refers to the buying and selling of goods or services over the Internet. Some businesses conduct e$-$commerce as a supplement to the physical presence of their $$brick and mortar$$ stores and some businesses only exist in the e$-$commerce arena. A significant advantage of e$-$commerce over traditional retailing is that the purchasing barriers of time and space are greatly reduced, if not eliminated. As long as a buyer has an Internet connection, an e$-$commerce $$store$$ is always open. Likewise, the geographic distance between buyer and seller are not usually a significant constraint in e$-$commerce. The Giants of e$-$commerce Most brick and mortar stores have evolved to have an e$-$commerce presence duplicating the goods and services available in their physical stores. However, there are several giants that specialize in e$-$commerce, and their collective impact on traditional retailing has been enormous. While all e$-$commerce companies provide a forum to bring buyers and sellers together, there are significant differences in the business models of the giants. Amazon is the giant in the U$.$S$.$ market and Alibaba is the giant in China. So far, each company has grown and prospered in their respective markets with only a limited amount of direct competition between the two. Amazon Amazon $($AMZN$)$ was founded in $1995$ by Jeff Bezos and began as an online retailer of books. Quickly, its product line evolved to include almost anything and everything. By $2019,$ Amazon had approximately $1$M employees and $$522$B in revenue. In Amazon$$s business model, both Amazon and its business partners sell a wide variety of new and used products directly to consumers. For some products, Amazon owns an inventory and acts as a reseller. For other products, often higher$-$priced products or less common products, Amazon does not own the inventory and does not act as a reseller. Instead, Amazon$$s business partners pay a fee, either a per$-$unit fee or a fixed fee, for the privilege of marketing their products on Amazon$$s online platform. In partnering with third parties in this way, Amazon can offer an expanded variety of products on their web site while avoiding the costs of owning slow$-$moving or high$-$priced inventory. Amazon$$s other revenue sources include sales of its cloud computing services, sales of electronic media content and payment processing commissions from Amazon$$s co$-$branded credit card. Alibaba Alibaba $($BABA$)$ was launched in $1999$ by Jack Ma and $17$ other stakeholders. In $2014$ the initial public offering $($IPO$)$ for Alibaba raised an amazing $$22$B$,$ the largest IPO up to that time. By $2019$ Alibaba had approximately $755$M active users, about $$56$B in revenue and accounted for $58\%$ of all online retail sales in China. Just as Amazon dominates the e$-$commerce landscape in the United States, Alibaba does the same in China. In contrast to Amazon, Alibaba does not own an inventory of products; it simply acts as a middleman bringing buyers and sellers together through several specialized websites. Alibaba.com is a business$-$to$-$business $($B$2$B$)$ website allowing manufacturers from multiple countries to connect with buyers. Alibaba$$s Taobao.com website, launched in $2003,$ connects international businesses$-$to$-$consumers $($B$2$C$)$ or consumers$-$to$-$consumers $($C$2$C$).$ Alibaba$$s Tmall.com website, launched in $2008,$ serves the needs of large multinational brands such as Apple, Nike, and others $($B$2$C$),$ and collects user fees and sales commissions from the sellers on this site. In $2014$ Alibaba launched $11$Main.com for U$.$S$.$ consumers in direct competition with Amazon $($B$2$C$),$ charging sales commissions to its product$-$selling business partners. Over the years, Alibaba has created an ecosystem of related companies. In $2004$ Alibaba created Alipay as a secure payment system for e$-$commerce transactions. Aliyun was created to sell cloud services and data management services using the large e$-$commerce infrastructure Alibaba has built. In $2007,$ Alimama was created to sell marketing and advertising services to Alibaba$$s e$-$commerce sellers. Other e$-$commerce Giants Other notables in the e$-$commerce space include Netflix, JD$.$com, Booking.com, and eBay. Netflix and Booking.com are sector$-$focused $($B$2$C$)$ companies; Netflix sells entertainment content; and Booking.com focuses on travel and hospitality. JD$.$com is a business$-$to$-$consumer direct$-$sales retailer $($B$2$C$),$ currently the second largest e$-$commerce company in China behind Alibaba. eBay is a multinational C$2$C e$-$commerce company that has no inventory; they simply provide a forum for connecting buyers and sellers, with revenue coming from transaction$-$based fees. e$-$commerce Technologies e$-$commerce relies on a variety of technologies, most obviously, a network of connected buyers and sellers, typically the Internet. The front$-$end $$client$$ environment is furnished by the buyer, usually a standard pe