If you live in the United States, you’d have to be completely unplugged and living a completely isolated life not to have heard of Amazon. But have you heard of Alibaba – its Asian competitor? Alibaba accounts for nearly 12% of all retail sales in China which is a huge number.
That’s according to Ecommerce Platforms Alibaba is giving Amazon a run for its money – here are a few noteworthy statistics:
- Amazon’s traffic is 2.2 billion visitors a month while Alibaba Group is 867 million
- Alibaba accounts for 11% of total retail in China while Amazon accounts for only 3% in the USA
- in 2016, gross merchandise volume for Amazon was $147 billion in 2016 versus 547 billion for Alibaba
- Amazon has over 341,000 employees while Alibaba has only 50,000
Interestingly, Amazon has a stock market cap of $427 billion, whereas Alibaba is only at $265 billion despite the better revenue figures. Moreover, according to Ecommerce Platforms, Alibaba’s Singles Day, an annual shopping holiday in China, drives $17.49 billion in sales and is by far the biggest online shopping event in the world – dwarfing Cyber Monday and Black Friday in the US.
Personally, I feel Amazon has the better marketing edge, including their influencer marketing platform, but they still have a ways to go. Fortunately, they have thousands of agencies like ours that help market the products on the platform for them – which is free.
