Case example Alibaba: the Yangtze River Crocodile Richard Whittington Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Source: Eugenio Loreto/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock In late 2018, Jack Ma, founder of China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba, announced shock news: in the coming year, he would step aside as company Chairman in favour of the Chief Executive, Daniel Zhang. Jack Ma had been Alibaba’s charismatic leader for two decades. But Ma made it clear that he was not disappearing altogether: he remained a major shareholder and would be a permanent member of the 36 strong ‘partnership’ that nominated the majority of the company’s board of directors. A senior banking analyst observed of Ma: ‘He has been the spiritual leader of the company since he founded it, and everyone looks up to him. People call him Teacher Ma. That means people are not looking at him as manager or chief execu- tive or chairman – they are looking to him for guidance.’ The new Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel Zhang was more of a professional manager than the entrepre- neurial Ma. Educated in China, he had begun his career in the accounting firms Arthur Andersen and PwC before joining Alibaba in 2007. One of Zhang’s great successes at Alibaba had been the idea of making Singles’ Day in November a national festival of shopping, all served by Alibaba’s online commerce businesses of course. Recently Zhang has rolled out Singles’ Day internationally, backed by his experience in international firms. During a company-wide strategy session soon after becoming Chief Executive in 2015, he said: ‘We must absolutely globalize. We will organize a global team and adopt global thinking to manage the business and achieve the goal of global buy and global sell.’ Jack Ma and colleagues had launched Alibaba in 1999 as China’s first business-to-business portal connecting domestic manufacturers with overseas buyers. Since then, the Group has grown in many directions. 1688.com was founded for business-to-business trade within China. Alibaba’s Taobao Marketplace serves small businesses and individuals. Tmall.com provides electronic shop fronts to help overseas companies such as Nike, Burberry and Decathlon to reach Chinese consumers. Juhuasuan offers daily deals on everything from toys to laptops. Behind all this are Alibaba’s enormous server farms, which form the basis for another market-leading business, cloud computing. There is also Alipay, effectively under Ma’s personal control but functioning as the Group’s equivalent to PayPal, which processes most Group transactions. One way or another, it is possible for Alibaba’s customers to trade almost anything: the American security services have even set up a sting operation on Alibaba to catch traders selling uranium to Iran. In 2018, Alibaba had approaching 58 per cent of the e-commerce market in China, the largest e-commerce market in the world. In 2015, Alibaba had invested in the Indian e-commerce business Snapdeal and the following year it bought a majority stake in the Singa- pore e-commerce business, Lazada. The company also had strong positions in Brazil and Russia. International e-commerce represented nearly 7 per cent of the company’s sales in the last quarter of 2018 (about $1,247m out of total quarterly sales of $17,057m: see also Table 1). Alibaba had always had an international bent. Jack Ma had started his career as an English language teacher in the city of Hangzhou, capital of the prosperous prov- ince of Zhejiang and not very far from Shanghai. Ma had discovered the Internet on his trips to the United States in the mid-1990s. As early as 2000, Ma had persuaded both the leading American investment bank Goldman Sachs and the Japanese internet giant Softbank to invest. The then ascendant American internet company Yahoo had bought nearly a quarter of the Group in 2005. Even after Alibaba went public in 2015, SoftBank still held 32.4 per cent of the shares and Yahoo 15 per cent. The Alibaba Group board counted as members Yahoo’s founder Jerry Yang, Softbank’s founder Masayoshi Son and Michael Evans, former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Even so, Jack Ma was ambivalent about Western investors: ‘Let the Wall Street investors curse us if they wish!’, Ma had 59 Chapter 2 Macro-environment analysis Table 1 Key statistics Sources: Statistical Report on Internet Development in China; InternetLiveStats.com; Statista.com. One Yuan = €0.13; $0.15; £0.11. 2010 2012 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Alibaba Group Sales Yuan bn 6.7 20.0 52.5 76.2 101.1 158.3 250.3 Chinese GDP Yuan Tr. 40.4 53.4 64.4 68.9 74.4 82.7 90.0 Chinese online retail sales Yuan Tr. 0.5 1.3 2.8 3.9 5.2 7.2 n.a. Per cent of Chinese using Internet 34.3 41.0 46.0 50.3 52.2 55.8 n.a. proclaimed at a staff rally. ‘We will still follow the principle of customers first, employees sec
理解问题Case example Alibaba: the Yangtze River Crocodile Richard Whittington Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Source: Eugenio Loreto/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock In late 2018, Jack Ma, founder of China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba, announced shock news: in the coming year, he would step aside as company Chairman in favour of the Chief Executive, Daniel Zhang. Jack Ma had been Alibaba’s charismatic leader for two decades. But Ma made it clear that he was not disappearing altogether: he remained a major shareholder and would be a permanent member of the 36 strong ‘partnership’ that nominated the majority of the company’s board of directors. A senior banking analyst observed of Ma: ‘He has been the spiritual leader of the company since he founded it, and everyone looks up to him. People call him Teacher Ma. That means people are not looking at him as manager or chief execu- tive or chairman – they are looking to him for guidance.’ The new Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel Zhang was more of a professional manager than the entrepre- neurial Ma. Educated in China, he had begun his career in the accounting firms Arthur Andersen and PwC before joining Alibaba in 2007. One of Zhang’s great successes at Alibaba had been the idea of making Singles’ Day in November a national festival of shopping, all served by Alibaba’s online commerce businesses of course. Recently Zhang has rolled out Singles’ Day internationally, backed by his experience in international firms. During a company-wide strategy session soon after becoming Chief Executive in 2015, he said: ‘We must absolutely globalize. We will organize a global team and adopt global thinking to manage the business and achieve the goal of global buy and global sell.’ Jack Ma and colleagues had launched Alibaba in 1999 as China’s first business-to-business portal connecting domestic manufacturers with overseas buyers. Since then, the Group has grown in many directions. 1688.com was founded for business-to-business trade within China. Alibaba’s Taobao Marketplace serves small businesses and individuals. Tmall.com provides electronic shop fronts to help overseas companies such as Nike, Burberry and Decathlon to reach Chinese consumers. Juhuasuan offers daily deals on everything from toys to laptops. Behind all this are Alibaba’s enormous server farms, which form the basis for another market-leading business, cloud computing. There is also Alipay, effectively under Ma’s personal control but functioning as the Group’s equivalent to PayPal, which processes most Group transactions. One way or another, it is possible for Alibaba’s customers to trade almost anything: the American security services have even set up a sting operation on Alibaba to catch traders selling uranium to Iran. In 2018, Alibaba had approaching 58 per cent of the e-commerce market in China, the largest e-commerce market in the world. In 2015, Alibaba had invested in the Indian e-commerce business Snapdeal and the following year it bought a majority stake in the Singa- pore e-commerce business, Lazada. The company also had strong positions in Brazil and Russia. International e-commerce represented nearly 7 per cent of the company’s sales in the last quarter of 2018 (about $1,247m out of total quarterly sales of $17,057m: see also Table 1). Alibaba had always had an international bent. Jack Ma had started his career as an English language teacher in the city of Hangzhou, capital of the prosperous prov- ince of Zhejiang and not very far from Shanghai. Ma had discovered the Internet on his trips to the United States in the mid-1990s. As early as 2000, Ma had persuaded both the leading American investment bank Goldman Sachs and the Japanese internet giant Softbank to invest. The then ascendant American internet company Yahoo had bought nearly a quarter of the Group in 2005. Even after Alibaba went public in 2015, SoftBank still held 32.4 per cent of the shares and Yahoo 15 per cent. The Alibaba Group board counted as members Yahoo’s founder Jerry Yang, Softbank’s founder Masayoshi Son and Michael Evans, former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Even so, Jack Ma was ambivalent about Western investors: ‘Let the Wall Street investors curse us if they wish!’, Ma had 59 Chapter 2 Macro-environment analysis Table 1 Key statistics Sources: Statistical Report on Internet Development in China; InternetLiveStats.com; Statista.com. One Yuan = €0.13; $0.15; £0.11. 2010 2012 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Alibaba Group Sales Yuan bn 6.7 20.0 52.5 76.2 101.1 158.3 250.3 Chinese GDP Yuan Tr. 40.4 53.4 64.4 68.9 74.4 82.7 90.0 Chinese online retail sales Yuan Tr. 0.5 1.3 2.8 3.9 5.2 7.2 n.a. Per cent of Chinese using Internet 34.3 41.0 46.0 50.3 52.2 55.8 n.a. proclaimed at a staff rally. ‘We will still follow the principle of customers first, employees sec
已完成理解「Case example Alibaba: the Yangtze River Crocodile Richard Whittington Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Source: Eugenio Loreto/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock In late 2018, Jack Ma, founder of China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba, announced shock news: in the coming year, he would step aside as company Chairman in favour of the Chief Executive, Daniel Zhang. Jack Ma had been Alibaba’s charismatic leader for two decades. But Ma made it clear that he was not disappearing altogether: he remained a major shareholder and would be a permanent member of the 36 strong ‘partnership’ that nominated the majority of the company’s board of directors. A senior banking analyst observed of Ma: ‘He has been the spiritual leader of the company since he founded it, and everyone looks up to him. People call him Teacher Ma. That means people are not looking at him as manager or chief execu- tive or chairman – they are looking to him for guidance.’ The new Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel Zhang was more of a professional manager than the entrepre- neurial Ma. Educated in China, he had begun his career in the accounting firms Arthur Andersen and PwC before joining Alibaba in 2007. One of Zhang’s great successes at Alibaba had been the idea of making Singles’ Day in November a national festival of shopping, all served by Alibaba’s online commerce businesses of course. Recently Zhang has rolled out Singles’ Day internationally, backed by his experience in international firms. During a company-wide strategy session soon after becoming Chief Executive in 2015, he said: ‘We must absolutely globalize. We will organize a global team and adopt global thinking to manage the business and achieve the goal of global buy and global sell.’ Jack Ma and colleagues had launched Alibaba in 1999 as China’s first business-to-business portal connecting domestic manufacturers with overseas buyers. Since then, the Group has grown in many directions. 1688.com was founded for business-to-business trade within China. Alibaba’s Taobao Marketplace serves small businesses and individuals. Tmall.com provides electronic shop fronts to help overseas companies such as Nike, Burberry and Decathlon to reach Chinese consumers. Juhuasuan offers daily deals on everything from toys to laptops. Behind all this are Alibaba’s enormous server farms, which form the basis for another market-leading business, cloud computing. There is also Alipay, effectively under Ma’s personal control but functioning as the Group’s equivalent to PayPal, which processes most Group transactions. One way or another, it is possible for Alibaba’s customers to trade almost anything: the American security services have even set up a sting operation on Alibaba to catch traders selling uranium to Iran. In 2018, Alibaba had approaching 58 per cent of the e-commerce market in China, the largest e-commerce market in the world. In 2015, Alibaba had invested in the Indian e-commerce business Snapdeal and the following year it bought a majority stake in the Singa- pore e-commerce business, Lazada. The company also had strong positions in Brazil and Russia. International e-commerce represented nearly 7 per cent of the company’s sales in the last quarter of 2018 (about $1,247m out of total quarterly sales of $17,057m: see also Table 1). Alibaba had always had an international bent. Jack Ma had started his career as an English language teacher in the city of Hangzhou, capital of the prosperous prov- ince of Zhejiang and not very far from Shanghai. Ma had discovered the Internet on his trips to the United States in the mid-1990s. As early as 2000, Ma had persuaded both the leading American investment bank Goldman Sachs and the Japanese internet giant Softbank to invest. The then ascendant American internet company Yahoo had bought nearly a quarter of the Group in 2005. Even after Alibaba went public in 2015, SoftBank still held 32.4 per cent of the shares and Yahoo 15 per cent. The Alibaba Group board counted as members Yahoo’s founder Jerry Yang, Softbank’s founder Masayoshi Son and Michael Evans, former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Even so, Jack Ma was ambivalent about Western investors: ‘Let the Wall Street investors curse us if they wish!’, Ma had 59 Chapter 2 Macro-environment analysis Table 1 Key statistics Sources: Statistical Report on Internet Development in China; InternetLiveStats.com; Statista.com. One Yuan = €0.13; $0.15; £0.11. 2010 2012 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Alibaba Group Sales Yuan bn 6.7 20.0 52.5 76.2 101.1 158.3 250.3 Chinese GDP Yuan Tr. 40.4 53.4 64.4 68.9 74.4 82.7 90.0 Chinese online retail sales Yuan Tr. 0.5 1.3 2.8 3.9 5.2 7.2 n.a. Per cent of Chinese using Internet 34.3 41.0 46.0 50.3 52.2 55.8 n.a. proclaimed at a staff rally. ‘We will still follow the principle of customers first, employees sec」
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阿里巴巴，中国的电商巨头，由马云于1999年创立，迅速崛起为全球最大的电子商务公司之一。马云不仅是公司的创始人，更是其精神领袖，被员工亲切地称为“马老师”。然而，2018年底，马云宣布将辞去公司董事长职务，由张勇接任。这一决定震惊了业界，但马云表示他仍将是公司的重要股东和董事会成员。
张勇，作为新任董事长和首席执行官，是一位专业的管理者，曾在安达信和普华永道工作，2007年加入阿里巴巴。他在阿里巴巴的成就之一是将“双十一”打造成全国性的购物节。张勇上任后，强调了公司的全球化战略，致力于打造一个全球化的团队，实现“全球买、全球卖”的目标。
阿里巴巴的业务范围广泛，从B2B平台到C2C的淘宝市场，再到B2C的天猫商城，以及聚划算的每日特惠和云计算服务。支付宝作为集团的支付工具，处理了大部分交易。阿里巴巴不仅在中国市场占据主导地位，还在印度、新加坡、巴西和俄罗斯等国际市场有重要布局。
尽管阿里巴巴有大量的西方投资者，如高盛、软银和雅虎，但马云对西方投资者持有保留态度，强调公司将始终以客户和员工为先。阿里巴巴的成功不仅在于其广泛的业务布局，更在于其对全球市场的深刻理解和战略布局。