Buy Buy In Overseas Market Alibaba Enters The Shopping Season

About this year Alibaba The news of mergers and acquisitions is endless, especially after its magnificent IPO. With a market value of 270 billion yuan in your pocket, every investment and strategic cooperation you make is worth more than 10 million yuan.

　　 Alibaba What do you like in the overseas market? First, it connects the huge domestic consumer market with the rich international commodity and cultural resources. The return on investment is relatively clear and the income is direct. Second, the e-commerce platform was transferred from the PC end to the mobile end, but the return on investment was uncertain in the short term, which caused a certain financial burden to the operation.

More Overseas products Introducing China has become one of Ali's strategic goals in the next decade. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on November 2, Ma Yun said, "It is our job to sell Chinese products to other countries in the world in the past 10-15 years. In the next 10 years, China's domestic demand is so huge that there should be more imports."

Alibaba is familiar with the e-commerce field, so it seems to have a clear goal and is easy to buy. The luxury e-commerce platform 1Stdibs in the vertical field is mainly targeted at high consumption groups; The newly established e-commerce 11Main mainly sells products with local characteristics in the United States; ShopRunner， It is dominated by logistics mode; Various contacts in Hollywood are aimed at American cultural and entertainment products. Through these investments, Alibaba has not only integrated the users of these companies, but also extended the industrial chain of its own platform, so that overseas investment can ultimately serve Alibaba's e-commerce platform.

Ali's shopping in the mobile terminal field aims to complete the transformation of e-commerce from PC terminal to mobile terminal as soon as possible. Jon, CEO of Daily Mail Steinberg said, "At present, the annual growth of PC terminal has dropped from 52% to 8%, and its development has slowed down significantly. If the development of mobile terminals is not fast enough, investors may be anxious. ” After the release of Alibaba's third quarter financial report, Cai Chongxin, executive vice chairman, said: "Mobile is the main goal of Alibaba's next development." In the third quarter of this year, the transaction volume of Alibaba's China retail platform from mobile terminals reached 199.054 billion yuan, up 263% year on year.

However, Alibaba's M&A of mobile terminals seems to be relatively lax. Not to mention that this year, it has successively acquired Gaud Maps and UC mobile browser in China. From the North American market, from the car sharing application Lyft to the mobile application search engine Quixey, When it comes to the application of TV remote control, it is hard to say how this series of investment reflects Ali's unified strategic direction on the mobile end. These companies can help Alibaba's e-commerce platform guide users, but how long it will take for them to actually take effect after the acquisition is not clear in the short term.

These investments have lengthened Alibaba's mobile front and imposed considerable financial burden on its own operations. Alibaba's net profit in the third quarter was $494 million, down 38.6% from the same period last year. Reuters columnist John According to Foley's analysis, the operating profit margin in Ali's financial report is the lowest point in its history since it paid Yahoo's option in 2012. The main reason is from a large number of mergers and acquisitions, many of which can not create direct benefits in the short term. Each M&A will also generate additional integration costs in terms of management communication, corporate culture integration and employee welfare.

Bearing these operational burdens, Alibaba seems to want to gradually build its own e-commerce ecosystem through this acquisition. Zhang Yong, the chief operating officer of Alibaba, said in an interview with China Business News that Alibaba wanted to "compete for the Internet with ecology in the next 15 years". However, many people who watch Ali's overseas shopping may be worried about the speed at which the ecosystem built with heavy money can bring investors returns.