Is Alibaba'S Listing The End Or The Beginning Of An Era

Here in the world Clothing shoes and hats The editor of the website introduces Alibaba's listing: the end or the beginning of an era?

On the evening of September 19, Beijing time, Alibaba, which has attracted worldwide attention, finally sounded the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange. Based on its US $68/ADS offering price, its financing amount exceeded the US $19.7 billion when VISA was listed, setting a new record for IPO transactions in the US market.

Whether it was the queuing of investors during the road show before listing or the overvaluation of nearly $200 billion after listing, Alibaba was pushed to the peak.

Should Ali buy or not? This problem has been puzzling many retail investors. Some media even conducted public opinion surveys through WeChat to understand people's investment intentions. To answer this question, there is no doubt that Ali's future growth cannot be avoided.

On Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan, Alibaba's story to the capital market is not new. Undoubtedly, according to the data disclosed by Alibaba, Alibaba's e-commerce business is still far ahead, and this pattern may not change in a short time.

But it cannot be ignored that, online retailers The market is changing. The rise of JD, Vipshop, Jumei.com and other platforms is breaking Alibaba's pattern of unifying the e-commerce world on the PC side. At the same time, the mobile Internet has brought e-commerce into a new era. In the mobile e-commerce ecosystem, various species are changing. Is this change enough to support Ali's rapid growth as always and its hegemony in unifying the Jianghu?

　 Subtle changes of businesses

Cai Peng, vice president in charge of sales of Shopex, told 21st Century Business Herald that in recent two years, the sales of the company's high-end product Commerce series have doubled every year, and even reached 180% year-on-year growth in 2013. At present, Shopex has become one of the largest third-party e-commerce service providers in China. Its Commerce series is a complete set of e-commerce solutions to help businesses carry out e-commerce in different network channels, uniformly control online sales channels, and establish a more unified network sales layout.

Some large businesses began to deploy their e-commerce business on a large scale throughout the network. Cai Peng said that the e-commerce channels of merchants who purchase this service are diversified, and Tmall, JD, Vipshop, as well as self built independent online stores, mobile terminals, etc. are all covered.

Wang Tao, the vice president of Yuewei Interactive, a proxy operating company, said that he had just signed a foreign brand, and this year he settled in Tmall, and next year he will launch JD. He said that at present, few brands put eggs in one basket. From the perspective of the development of proxy operators, it has long been a trend for merchants to choose multiple platforms.

Wang Jianping, the secretary-general of e-commerce dream factory, a private alliance, said that since last year, there have been some new changes in the generation operation industry. Some generation operation companies no longer accept all customers, but focus on one or several vertical category operations. It is understood that the result is that the agent operators must develop multiple e-commerce platforms horizontally to achieve performance growth.

Cai Peng said that after years of Internet practice, large-scale traditional enterprises have begun to rethink their business models, trying to open up their front-end demand chain and back-end supply chain through e-commerce, and establish their own business closed-loop, so they will look for more Internet contacts, including WeChat, Weibo, App, and independent official websites, in addition to Tmall and JD, This has also changed the previous platform centric model. Enterprises become the main body, and major e-commerce platforms become a part of their entire business model.

It is worth noting that some enterprises have begun to re attach importance to their independent official websites. The reason behind this is that through Tmall Taobao, JD and other platforms, only simple sales can be completed, but membership management cannot be carried out, because the users brought by the platform still belong to the platform, and cannot get through with the existing membership system of merchants. Therefore, some large enterprises try to build their own e-commerce closed-loop by building their own malls.

The driving force for enterprises to expand e-commerce platforms is increasing, but obviously, the operation of multiple platforms will lead to a decrease in the proportion of businesses' investment in Tmall Taobao. The person in charge of a large clothing brand said that most of its e-commerce investment was in Tmall platform before. Although it is still investing, in the overall investment budget, it will also allocate a certain proportion of funds to other e-commerce platforms. As for the specific proportion, he did not disclose.

The founder of a medium-sized enterprise selling leather bags in Guangzhou also said that last year, 100% of its e-commerce budget was invested in Tmall and Taobao stores. This year, after opening stores such as JD and Amazon, part of the investment will be diverted.

According to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, although the annual e-commerce budget of businesses is increasing, few businesses have doubled, and the proportion of funds invested in platforms other than Tmall Taobao is gradually increasing.

Several businessmen interviewed by the reporter of 21st Century Economic Daily said that the biggest investment of e-commerce is marketing. Therefore, for Tmall, Taobao and Juhuasuan, whose main profit models are advertising and commission, the rise of JD, Vipshop and other platforms has obviously diverted some of Alibaba's e-commerce revenue. At the same time, according to the public data disclosed by several e-commerce listed companies, their operating revenues have all achieved substantial growth.

Mobile breaks the traffic monopoly

Wang Jianping recently visited several e-commerce enterprises with tens of millions of sales, and found that 50% - 70% of their sales came from mobile terminals; Cai Peng also said that half of the customers who come to consult business every day will put forward the demand of mobile terminal; Hu Song, CEO of Shell and Fruit Company, an Internet brand of Zhan's Group, said that the sales of Shell and Fruit mobile terminals had reached 60%.

Mobile e-commerce has become a reality from concept. At present, Alibaba is still far ahead in the field of mobile e-commerce. According to its prospectus, in the second quarter, the transaction volume of Alibaba's mobile e-commerce platform exceeded 164 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about three times, accounting for 32.8%; The revenue of mobile terminal reached 2.454 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 923%, accounting for 19.4%, 16.6% higher than the same period in 2013, and 7% higher than the first quarter of 2014. According to the data released by a third-party organization, mobile Taobao+mobile Tmall account for 85% of the transaction share of the mobile shopping market.

However, Cai Peng pointed out that the biggest change in the mobile Internet era is to break the pattern of traffic monopoly in the PC era. Mobile traffic is fragmented. Therefore, businesses are no longer controlled by the traffic of some giants.

This change has been reflected in mobile Taobao. Hu Song said that on the mobile end, the traffic of Shell Fruit mainly comes from We Media, QQ Space and Weibo, while mobile Taobao is just a place to complete transactions, and the proportion of other channels will become higher and higher in the future.

In the era of mobile Internet, the traffic sources of merchants have also begun to diversify, which means a challenge for mobile Taobao.

The current mobile Taobao includes Taobao, Tmall, Juhuasuan and other business modules. Its business and profit model is basically the replication of the PC side: Taobao mainly relies on advertising revenue, Tmall revenue consists of commission and advertising, and Juhuasuan also focuses on commission and advertising (pit). Therefore, once mobile Taobao merchants start looking for traffic outside Taobao, they will inevitably reduce their advertising investment inside Taobao.

At the same time, due to the small size of the mobile phone screen, the original advertising mode will be greatly reduced compared with the PC side, whether it is advertising space or search.

Cai Peng said that mobile Internet is based on social networking and sharing to gather traffic. Different ways of obtaining traffic directly lead to the development of those who catch traffic. Therefore, in the era of fragmented mobile Internet traffic, social marketing has become popular, changing the simple advertising diversion model.

The subtle changes of businesses on the mobile end are also gradually changing the ecology of mobile e-commerce. Ali needs to explore new models on the mobile end.

O2O Battle

Alibaba's prospectus shows that the three e-commerce businesses of Taobao+Tmall+Juhuasuan are still its main source of income, but for the capital market, there may be O2O in the future.

Several traditional businesses interviewed by the 21st Century Business Herald all said that they are still trying in O2O, but it must be a trend. The tools are mainly through WeChat and Alipay Wallet.

At present, Alipay Wallet of the Ali system has taken a strategic position in the O2O field, involving hospitals, public transportation, retail, catering and other industries. However, unlike the PC era, Tencent's WeChat has become Ali's strongest competitor in the O2O era based on mobile Internet. Although WeChat has not yet formed a "hegemony" in the O2O field, Ali has to pay attention to this opponent strategically.

At the same time, it is worth noting that Alipay Wallet belongs to Alibaba Microenterprise Financial Services Group and is not the asset of Alibaba's listing this time.

The O2O concept of Alibaba, a listed company, can only rely on Taodian and the wholly-owned acquisition of Gaode Map and UC. However, judging from the current situation, Taodian is still in its infancy, regardless of the number of merchants connected or the revenue contributed. Even if compared internally, it cannot be compared with Alipay Wallet.

In the past two years, maps and search have been regarded as two major entrances to O2O. At present, Gaud Map and Kuaidi have joined hands to fight in the field; At the same time, it began to integrate with the Shenma Search under UC, which will form an O2O model based on LBS and search. It is understood that in the future, the merchant data of Alipay Wallet will be gradually integrated into Shenma Search, and users will find goods and services from online to offline through mobile search, combined with the positioning and navigation of Gaode Map.

But in this new field, Alibaba is also facing the challenges of Baidu, Tencent and Sogou in terms of maps and search.

Both the penetration rate of traditional e-commerce to offline retail, the exploration of mobile Internet commercialization, and the emerging O2O to offline business transformation are at a low level at present, with huge market space in the future.

But for the peak listed Alibaba The old era has ended, and a new era filled with gunpowder has begun.