The Chinese e-commerce site is very successful there, beating the American giant Amazon by far.
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Battle lost for Jeff Bezos. While its Amazon empire has largely conquered e-commerce in Western Europe, the east of the Old Continent prefers its great Asian competitor. This is what emerges from the latest Euromonitor international barometer. Alibaba is the third e-commerce site used in particular in the former Soviet republics behind the Polish Allegro and the Russian Wildberries, relegating Amazon to the top 10.
Is it a question of culture or a winning business strategy on Alibaba’s part? Difficult to decide, but it is a fact, the Eastern Europeans prefer to buy on the Chinese site rather than on that of the great rival from across the Atlantic. While Amazon continues to grow in Western Europe, Alibaba is gaining market share in Poland and its neighbors where it is stepping up promotions to secure an ever-growing customer base. Alibaba delivers by air rather than by ship. The ports are currently saturated but online commerce is not stopping. The Chinese site is therefore increasing charter flights from Asia to Eastern Europe.
Alibaba intends to take advantage of this commercial success to gain market share and expand into Western Europe. Further than Russia, the logistics and transport subsidiary of Alibaba (AliExpress) now wants to install lockers to deliver its parcels to Spain and France.
The various confinements are not unrelated to this push, the online sales sites have benefited from it. But it is above all a strategic battle: Alibaba is not welcome in the United States and vice versa for Amazon in China. The playing field of the two companies is therefore in the middle, in Europe, on neutral ground.