Group assignment

1. Success in Ecommerce
The story of Taobao.com
Contents:
1. Overview of Taobao.com
2. How Taobao bested eBay
3. Lessons learnt

2. 1, Overview of Taobao.com
• Founded in May 10, 2003.
• website for online shopping in China, similar to eBay
and Amazon, run by Alibaba Group.
• facilitates C2C retail by providing a platform for
entrepreneurs to open online retail stores that mainly
cater to consumers in China, Hongkong, Macau and
Taiwan

3. 1, Overview of Taobao.com
• Around 760 million product listings (March 2013)
• One of the world’s top 20 most visited websites
according to Alexa.
• In 2013, combined gross merchandise volume
(GMV) : > 1 trillion yuan.

4. 1, Overview of Taobao.com
• Sellers: post new and used goods for sale or resale
through a fixed price or by auction.
• Majority of the products: brand new merchandise
sold at a fixed price, auctions make up a small
percentage of transactions.
• Buyers: assess seller backgrounds by information
available on the site: ratings, comments and
complaints

5. 1, Overview of Taobao.com
• April 2008, Taobao introduced a B2C platform , Taobao
Mall, to complement C2C marketplace.
• October 2010, launched eTao as an independent searching
engine for online shopping.
• June 2011, Taobao would be split into three different
companies: Taobao Marketplace , Tmail.com, eTao.
• 2012 onwards, began to accept international payments.
• 1st August 2013, launched Weibo, allowing users to link
Sina Weibo accounts with Taobao accounts.

6. 2. How Taobao bested eBay?
● Taobao vs Ebay
- Founded in 1995, a notable success story of
the dot-com bubble
- Global revenues > $2bn in 2004

7. 2. How Taobao bested eBay?
What lead to Taobao’s success?
- Free listing
- Innovative customer service
- Clever move in advertising competition
- Diversified ecosystem
●

8. 2. How Taobao bested eBay?
- In 2006: Ebay shut its main website in China
- By 2010, Taobao: served > 80 % of China’s ecommerce market
+ Had 170m registered users
+ Had revenues > Rmb 20bn
Ebay moved its business, focus to cross-border ecommerce

9. 3. Lessons learnt
•
Keep up with trends and developments in online retail industry:
Subscribe to industry journals and online discussion groups, keep an
eye on the competition and adopt new technology
• Create quality content and keep it fresh: Leverage existing content
and repurpose old promos for the Web, develop and protect your
brand.
• Improve customer service: establish a good customer relationship
management. Though consumers may interface with a machine,
remind them at every step that there’s a human on the other end.
• Focus on promoting the company: Focus your attention on
promoting the company, getting its name out there to expand
market share.