Alibaba has adjusted its product mix for the first time in its nine-year history. Yesterday, Alibaba (01688.HK) issued an announcement that the Chinese supplier of products for foreign trade will be upgraded to "global treasure", on the basis of increasing functions, the price remains unchanged, while creating a new product "export pass", priced at 19800 yuan, the scope of its services will be popularized to more and smaller small and medium-sized enterprises. This puts direct pressure on its competitors such as Global Resources and MadeInChina.
Alibaba CEO Wei Zhe said in an interview with China Business News that this is part of Alibaba's "winter aid plan" to help small and medium-sized enterprises in the global financial crisis. Wei Zhe expects that the third and fourth quarters of next year will be the most difficult period for domestic small and medium-sized enterprises, the launch of this product will help Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises in the severe economic situation, at a lower cost to achieve better overseas marketing effect, so as to help through the "winter" of the global economy.
According to Alibaba's financial report of the second quarter of this year, its products engaged in foreign trade business "Chinese suppliers" currently have nearly 30,000 paying members, and the membership fee starts at 50,000 yuan. Such a product structure is only suitable for relatively large foreign trade enterprises.
The results of the survey commissioned by Alibaba show that in the current global economic downturn, more than 30% of Chinese smes are willing to invest in e-commerce platforms for about 20,000 yuan, and about 20% of enterprises are between 20,000 and 50,000 yuan.
Alibaba's "Export Pass", which is listed today, is a product designed to cater to a wider market. "A start-up foreign trade enterprise of one or two people can now choose to export this product." Wei Zhe said that Exportation services a wider range of customers, but also more suitable for the current international trade small orders, customized characteristics. For this reason, Alibaba has carried out a lot of preparatory work, and for this product alone, it has experienced nearly half a year from the establishment of the project to the launch.
Wei Zhe predicted that due to the bad economic situation, the rise of global treasure may be relatively slow, and the majority of new paying members will use export pass in the future.
Internet analyst Lu Bowang believes that this product structure system will reduce the marketing costs of small and medium-sized enterprises at the same time, so that it can more effectively docking with overseas markets, so as to help small and medium-sized enterprises to find opportunities for winter.
B2B companies in the field of foreign trade, there are Alibaba, Global Resources, MadeInChina, Huicong, etc., but in addition to Alibaba, most of the other companies use low price strategies to attract small and medium-sized enterprise customers.
Wei said that according to Alibaba's survey of small and medium-sized enterprises, due to the overall contraction of the global economy, the third and fourth quarters of next year, China's export growth may drop to single digits for the first time, and customers do start to invest more cautiously in the Internet this year.
"At this time, smes will definitely choose large and influential platforms to launch." With more than 15 billion yuan in cash reserves throughout the group, Alibaba can not only help small and medium-sized enterprises out of the winter, but also have more initiative than other competitors, Wei said.
Author: Yang Guoqiang