The market strategy of Alibaba’s global “AliExpress” is different from that of traditional cross-border e-commerce platforms, which focus on Europe and the United States as the mainstream markets. The core target markets of “AliExpress” are all in emerging markets, and Russia is the most important overseas market for “AliExpress” worldwide.
As we all know, Russia has always had a very deep relationship with China. As the country with the largest land area in the world, Russia has a population of 143.1 million, and the market characteristics of Russia are vast land and sparse population, which also provides the basic conditions for the development of e-commerce in Russia. More importantly, due to historical reasons, Russia’s economic structure is biased towards heavy industry, which accounts for about 80% of the total output value. Daily light industrial products have always been imported from countries like China, which provides a market foundation for the development of Russia’s cross-border market.
Another characteristic of Russians is that they like social networks very much. The penetration rate of smart phones is 40%, and the social application of SNS has reached 42%. This characteristic provides a solid customer base for the most popular mobile Internet consumption. “AliExpress” has always been the most popular shopping website in Russia. Although there are not many consumers who shop online in Russia, accounting for about 25% of the total population, online shopping is developing very fast. AliExpress is the most popular cross-border website in Russia, accounting for about 35% of total online sales.
In 2015, in order to consolidate its leading position in the field of e-commerce in Russia, AliExpress jointly promoted the customer points program with Russia’s online bank TINKOFF Bank, which led to a rapid increase in the number of downloads of the mobile Internet “AliExpress” APP in Russia. “AliExpress” is so popular in Russia. In addition to Russia’s dependence on Chinese imports in the traditional light industry field, its domestic economic problems have also reversely promoted the development of “AliExpress” in Russia. In recent years, Russia has experienced serious domestic inflation. In the first quarter of 2015, retail sales fell by 6.7% year-on-year. The downward pressure on the economy is very large, and many people are not guaranteed employment. Under such economic pressure, buying cheap and high-quality Chinese products through the cross-border platform “AliExpress” is the best choice for Russians.
One of the core factors for AliExpress’s popularity in Russia is that AliExpress itself attaches great importance to the Russian market. In April 2015, AliExpress upgraded its Russian PREMIERE channel to be similar to Taobao and Tmall. In the future, it will provide more high-quality goods to the Russian market and launched three new services, namely 100% quality assurance, 7-day unconditional return, and 15-day fast delivery in core cities.