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Major Alibaba Competitors SWOT Audit

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Major Alibaba Competitors SWOT Audit

The Amazon

Amazon can be classified as one of the main competitors of Alibaba. The company is situated

in Northern America. It has its weaknesses, strengths threats and opportunities as opposed to

Alibaba; (Wu, et al, 2017)

Strengths of Amazon

Amazon pays a lot of attention to innovation and technology. Every year Amazon spends

billions of dollars in carrying out research. Their main goal is to ensure that the customers are

satisfied. Artificial intelligence is one of the areas they focus on a lot in order to ensure that

the customers get a different and better experience.

Amazon has a made a name for itself globally ie in America, Africa, asia and Europe.

Distance is not a limitation for the company they ensure they reach their customers globally

and this is facilitated by its one of a kind logistics and delivery systems as opposed to its

competitors such as Alibaba. The company has an ample affiliate marketing programme that

accommodates different internet marketers globally and compensates them when they set the

company’s products. This programme is unambiguous hence attracting a large number of

internet marketers. (Majed, et al, 2018)

Amazon has a large variety of products that it deals with. This diversification of commodities

isn’t constant which is very lucrative. It sells commodities such as hunting gears, electronics,

furniture and music to its customers.

Amazon is a market leader having approximately $1 trillion market funding and over$386

billion yearly revenues thus makes it a leader in the online retail business.

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The company also merges the market place, prime and amazon web services which are the

main activities it deals with. They all play their role in the collaboration thus helping the

company generate maximum gain which would not have been achieved if they worked

independently.

Weaknesses of Amazon

The company’s business model can be easily imitated. When a business oriented person

studies the model he/ she can generate a similar ecommerce platform and provide the services

that Amazon provides. Small upcoming ventures such as Hulu, Netflix, Alibaba and eBay are

making Amazon to have a hard time.

The company has been found guilty for tax evasion in the US, the United Kingdom and japan

which has created a bad reputation for the company.

Lastly It was really hit when its Fire Phone commence in the USA broke down and the

projection that Amazon had about the product was not attained.

Opportunities of Amazon

If Amazon has more brick and mortar shops then its better competitiveness with the large box

retailers and also better engagement of the customers with the brand.

Lastly amazon should purchase other business since it has a large financial capacity and this

will help amazon to be more known in the world hence more sales and more profits. (Diehl,

et al, 2017)

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Threats to Amazon

Amazon faces hostile completion from vast ecommerce retail companies such as Alibaba,

eBay and Wal-Mart. Other companies offering videos streaming services, self-driving

technology and logistics are also a threat to Amazon.

Lastly Amazon has a large number of fake product reviews and governments of countries

such as Iran, Cuba Sudan and Syria doesn’t allow the company to ship their products there.

This acts as an advantage to other ecommerce retailers such as Alibaba.

JD.com

JD.com is China based online retailer that gives Alibaba competition locally since it is act as

as service provider and in the ecommerce business. It also has its weaknesses, strengths,

opportunities, and threats.

Strengths of JD.com

It has a well-built online presence on non-identical social networking platforms and a reliable

social media administration for management and also helps in developing tight association

with their customers.

JD.com has a great financial health and position for the company to acquire resources/ raw

materials and also make further investments/diversification. They have a well-developed and

integrated information technology framework that provides efficiency when operating and

consistency in production of a particular quality of a service or product.

The company’s geographical location in different regions is strength because it is able to sell

it products in a large area hence reaching the target customers therefore, more profit for the

company. (Chan, et al, 2018)

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Weaknesses of JD.com

JD.com doesn’t invest much on development and research as compared to other competitors

like Alibaba and Amazon therefore it is not able to compete with them in the same level.

The company is not good at commodity demand prediction there missing more opportunities

as compared to its competitor such as Alibaba. Its inventory is also very high as opposed to

its competitors because they cant do a proper prediction and they end up having higher

inventory either in channel or in house.

Opportunities of JD.com

There are new environmental strategies which creates a equal playground to all the firms in

the industry. It presents an opportunity for the company to get advantage from using new

technology and acquire market share in the up to the minute product category.

Threats to JD.com

The increasing cost of raw materials acts as a threat to the company’s profitability. The

amount of highly lucrative commodities comes in seasons. There is stiff competition from the

ecommerce giants like Alibaba that has influenced a lot of pressure on not only sales but also

profitability. (Tian, et al., 2018)

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References

Wu, X., & Gereffi, G. (2018). Amazon and Alibaba: Internet governance, business models,

and internationalization strategies. In International business in the information and

digital age. Emerald Publishing Limited.

Majed, S. Z., Nuraddin, S. H., & Hama, S. V. S. (2018). Analyzing the amazon success

strategies. Journal of process management. New Technologies, 6(4), 65-69.

Diehl, K., & Bishop, B. (2017). Strategic Analysis of Amazon Madison Morgan November

16, 2017 MGMT 275.

Chan, A. K., Chen, C. H., & Zhao, L. (2018). JD. com: leveraging the edge of e-

business. Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies.

Tian, L., Zhou, F., Ding, Q., & Teng, P. (2019, October). Application of Harvard Analytical

Framework in the Field of Electronic Commerce: Take JD as An Example. In 2019

3rd International Conference on Data Science and Business Analytics (ICDSBA) (pp.

356-362). IEEE.