Ebay: Your Profit Is My Opportunity.

Ma Yun wrote in an open letter to Alibaba's stock listing: "many years ago, our company's founder was eager to set up a company founded by Chinese people but belongs to the whole world and belongs to this era."

He believes that Alibaba is not just an e-commerce company, but also a business ecosystem. Alibaba not only wants to be China's Internet giant, but also wants to compete with world-class rivals.

Before the listing, Alibaba is actively distributing the international market.

It has bought several US electricity supplier companies and mobile Internet Co, and has set up its own e-commerce website 11Main in the US.

For Amazon, eBay, and WAL-MART, who started their own business giants in the US, Alibaba is a strong competitor in the international market. In the eyes of Google and Facebook advertisers, Alibaba will not only compete with them to invest in emerging enterprises, but also cut off their own profit cakes; PayPal, Google Checkout and Apple Pay will not take lightly on Alibaba, because Alipay, which operates successfully in China, is likely to become a threat to them in the future.

The Alibaba is rooted in China and will face strong American rivals with competitive advantages as it grows bigger and goes global.

It is not so easy for Alibaba to challenge Amazon in overseas markets, and Amazon is also an Internet company without borders.

Amazon's two quarter earnings report in 2014 showed that revenue from media products accounted for 25%, while other businesses (mainly cloud services) accounted for 6%.

Cloud service is the most promising business of Amazon, and has established a leading position in this business.

Amazon is also an enterprise focusing on products and services. They directly provide consumers with Kindle, Fire Phone and other mobile terminal products, as well as upstream music, video and e-books.

These services have created a lot of profits for Amazon, which makes it impossible for Alibaba to get involved in these areas through capital and hope to build a profitable ecosystem.

However, Alibaba's Taobao model is also challenging Amazon.

Because Amazon's business model relies on three pillars, led by low profits.

In more than one interview, Bezos mentioned how Amazon relies on low profits to win development opportunities.

Alibaba relies entirely on advertising and value-added services instead of relying on products. This model is effective.

Bezos has a popular saying: "your profit is my opportunity."

The above article asks: if the competitor's profit is zero, what is Amazon's opportunity?

E-commerce business supports most of Alibaba's revenue, but Alibaba does not have the same stock as the US e-commerce giant Amazon, nor does it participate in the sale of goods. It is more like an online commercial real estate company.

Therefore, in the way of profit, Alibaba relies on charging membership fees and trading commissions to merchants, and charging promotion fees through its advertising platform, "Ali mother".

This is highly similar to the eBay mode.

EBay is an old US electricity supplier founded in 1995. It has business in more than 30 countries around the world.

In fiscal year 2013, eBay's revenue was $16 billion 47 million, and its net profit was $2 billion 856 million, of which e-commerce services revenue and payment service revenue (PayPal) accounted for about half.

EBay is also a platform mode, relying on businesses to receive commission and value-added services to make profits.

In 2003, eBay spent $150 million to buy eBay to enter China, but was later beaten by free Taobao.

At that time, eBay China's CEO

Once said, "free is not a business mode."

Alibaba, which chose the free route, captured the sellers and users of eBay, and finally found a bigger profit cake on Tmall mall.

EBay has embarked on a road of overseas expansion, constantly copying models to more countries, hoping to win by volume.

Today, although the total revenue of eBay is higher than that of Alibaba, it can not be compared with Alibaba in terms of profitability and ecosystem construction.

However, with the internationalization of eBay, it is not easy for Alibaba to compete directly with Europe and North America, and perhaps the opportunity to compete in emerging markets such as Brazil and India.

Amazon makes more than eBay.

Headache.

The e-commerce website, founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos, now has operations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China and Japan.

In the fiscal year of 2013, Amazon's total revenue was $74 billion 450 million, and its net profit was $274 million.

Although Alibaba's net profit is higher than that of Amazon, Amazon's revenue is several times larger than Alibaba's. this reflects the different characteristics of B2C mode and platform mode.

Most of the goods are purchased from suppliers, warehouses and inventories. Compared with Alibaba, Amazon is essentially retailing, earning income by earning the difference in prices.

Therefore, it also inherited the characteristics of the retail industry, that is, low gross margin and great pressure on inventory management.

In the Chinese market, Amazon is completely concealed by the Alibaba.

Alibaba's entry into Amazon's overseas market is beset with difficulties.

From the perspective of consumer experience, Amazon has its own logistics and distribution team to better control the quality of services.

Amazon's Jingdong mall, a better logistics experience in the Chinese market, is forcing Ma to make up his mind to solve the logistics problem by building a rookie network.

From the point of view of circulation efficiency, a commodity from the manufacturer to the end consumer has less social resources through Amazon.