Literature review comments
This is my submitted literature review and i got 56 out of 100 on it and these are the comments:
Content and Coverage: 54
An adequate number of sources have been reviewed, though some are not appropriately academic. The research questions have been analysed and justified and there is mention of literature in the text. The content is relevant to the topic, but focuses more on information on the topic, rather than critiquing the literature – the focus should be on existing studies. Some of the information here would be more appropriate for the introduction.
Critical Appraisal: 54
There is an attempt to engage critically with the literature, but this is not fully analytical, more information based. Consider the following:
– Which studies were important in developing this research topic?
– What are some limitations / weaknesses of existing studies?
– Are there research gaps?
– How do these studies relate to your project title?
Organising Ideas: 58
The text employs a suitable structure, with subheadings and a numbering system to help guide the reader. A contents page would have helped with this. Though the text is grouped logically into paragraphs, there are too many subsections (especially in 3.4), which could have been combined to avoid the inconsistent size of the sections – this would also help manage the word count.
Academic Expression: 56
The language used is mostly correct and academic, with few, minor errors. There are some errors in the title and the RQs (see your tutor to redraft these). There are some issues with your use of APA referencing styles, and it is recommended to review this before your next submission.
One issue is that this is way over the word count, which has affected your mark. Make sure that you keep within the word count in future submissions.
project tittle:
Marketing strategies used in the E-commerce field, and how Alibaba “as an e-commerce leader” adapted online and Artificial intelligence marketing to reach their current success.
- Research questions:
What Marketing strategies E-commerce business use to market their platforms?
E-commerce is considered to be a relatively new business area, compared to the other business models where internet wasn’t a median. It started alongside the first years of the WWW. boom, creating a totally new revenue streams, enhanced older ones and allowed the conversation between customer and the business owners to be more of value. Hence, with this new business model the need to enhance the marketing strategies was a necessity (Stone, B. 2013). With this question I am willing to study and objectively discuss the different Marketing methods used in the E-commerce industry and evaluate their success rates.
How Alibaba uses online marketing strategies to reach their customers and dominate new territories?
This question is going to take the case of Alibaba company Marketing channels under examination in order to extract how they benefited from the new Marketing term “internet/online marketing” to achieve their current success (Yazdandifrad, R, Hynn Li, M, 2014).The development, the current and the future of the implementation of the internet in the different marketing levels will be discussed and studied the process of how they were utilized.
What Artificial Intelligence marketing methods Alibaba uses in their Marketing plan?
AI “artificial intelligence” is an interesting topic in the Marketing field, especially e-commerce Marketing. There is a huge difference between what people think AI and it actually applied, people and marketers’ perception of AI have evolved and changed through the years and yet not fully comprehended (Cannella, J. 2018). On the other hand, the potential of AI is still considered limited, and only few companies benefit from it, but when integrated with the online Marketing strategies they create the best value (Geru, M. and Capatina, A, 2018). This question is to raise to our attention what AI Marketing methods have been used in Alibaba and what future does it holds for marketing among its pages.
- Literature review:
3.1 Introduction:
In this chapter different relevant literature “academic articles, websites and books” will be reviewed, combined the knowledge into solid theoretical framework and integrated with existing resources to identify the marketing strategies used by e-commerce business to increase their market share and acquire the most customers.
3.2 Background about Alibaba:
Alibaba has been a hot topic among investors for quite some time now, the success it achieved and the infrastructure it builds is set to redefine many concepts about e-commerce (Yazdandifrad, R, Hynn Li, M, 2014). The company was found 21 years ago in 1999, with only 18 employees led by Jack Ma “ a former English teacher and a later founder of Alibaba”, only to grow to more than 100,000 employees in 2020, and from his own apartment to 12 different office locations around the globe, headquarters in Hangzhou in China, and different branches in areas like Silicon Valley, London and India (Our businesses, 2020).
Alibaba’s success is undeniable, BBC news, stated that ” the total value of merchandise sold in Alibaba in 2013 was far more than Amazon and eBay combined”. Forbes magazine also reported that, “Alibaba is not only the largest IPO in U.S. history but has also risen more than the three largest IPOs by American Internet companies combined “. (Yazdandifrad, R, Hynn Li, M, 2014).
According to a Harvard study that has been conducted by professor Julie Wulf in 2010, Alibaba is the biggest enterprise in China, and it have a huge impact in the Chinese economy. The company’s 2019 quarter report repotted that’s that it had experienced a 38% in the total revenue growth this year. The holding group company is divided into 9 within businesses “Taobao, Tmall, AliExpress, alibaba.com, 1688, alimama, Alibaba cloud, Cainiao network and ant financial”. But we will only focus in the E-commerce based businesses (Our businesses, 2020).
According to Yazdandifard, R. et Hynn Li, M 2014 Alibaba main focus was small to medium enterprises and individual businessmen, and hence it was hard to compete with the big firms, Alibaba was created with one thing in mind “to make it easy to do business anywhere”, which evolved to the current company’s mission.e The company’s vision on the other side is to rebuild the future infrastructure of commerce business and to build a company that lasts 102 years. Furthermore, one of the main values at Alibaba is “customer first, employee second, shareholder third”, which emphasis the customer-oriented perception. (Alibaba group at a glance, 2020). And as McGovern, 2014, said the customer now is more powerful than ever.
But even though Alibaba may seem as a successful company, it had and will continue to have a road full of challenges “such as cultural clash and new International markets barriers” that they need to overcome in order to last in today’s competitive market (Yazdandifrad, R, Hynn Li, M, 2014).
With this huge success comes a greater liability, how are they going to market their platforms in order to stay relevant and ahead of their competition? According to Yazdandifrad, R, Hynn Li, M, 2014 The marketing strategy plays an important role in achieving the overall strategic plan in Alibaba.
Alibaba December quarter 2019, financial report, December Quarter 2019 Results, (2020)
3.4 Definitions and concepts about E-commerce business performance and its connection to Marketing:
Business performance have a direct influence in the financial position, and operating results such as productivity, customer satisfaction and marketing efficiency of the company (Chan, Y.C.L and Lynn, B.E. (1991)). However, according to Tomas, Robert, Gary (2004), Business performance is defined as the achievement of the organizational profitability, growth in both sales and market share, it’s also the accomplishment of the strategic objectives.
3.4.1 Marketing:
“Marketing, More than a lake or a forest, it’s the landscape of our modern lives”
Seth Godin, 2018
Kotler and Armstrong, 2010, defined marketing as the social process where individuals and groups meet to exchange what they need by creating values to one another. But the definition is not sufficient for the fact that marketing has changed through the years, nowadays it’s all about creating value, build customer relationship, rise the consumer-enterprise conversation, and converting it to sales (Godin, S. 2018). The American marketing association also defines it as “the activities, institutions and processes to create, communicate, deliver, and exchange valuable offerings for customers, consumers, partners and society at large (AMA, 2013).
For another perception we can see that Dr. Flip defined it as giving the customer the proper product and services at the proper time at the most appropriate price. And if you didn’t get close to you customer your competitor will (Atkins, S. 2011)
3.4.2 Digital marketing:
Recently Companies are adjusting their business models to use the internet in their best benefit. Marketing field is no different, it’s in-fact one of the first areas that started developing their strategies to include internet and increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Digital marketing is one most new effective forms of marketing in the new era, M. Shirisha, 2018, describes it as “an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium”,. It can also be defined as the data collection, analysis, real data of customer activities evaluation, and real time Communication with customers and other contacts online (Alt, Rainer and Österle, Hubert, 2013).
On the other hand, USA Today network Tennessee, 2013, defines online Marketing as a type of strategy, that uses different means and approaches through the internet, and finding your right marketing strategy will not only enhance your sales but also gives valid measurement for the success of these strategies and enhance them, give insights and establish firms reputation and brand awareness. digital marketing provided a new medium for not only the exchange of currency, but more importantly exchange of value, which demonstrates in entertainment, enlightenment and utility (M. Shirisha, 2018). However, in his article “Digital importance in the new era” he doesn’t include how E-commerce platforms utilize these channels to create their own value.
3.4.3 Different channels of digital marketing.
There are different methods to reach the highest possible number of customers online, some of the main digital marketing strategies that includes both innovative and technical tools are:
- Email Marketing
- search engine marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- influencers marketing
- social media marketing
- Pay per click
- & online advertising (M. Shirisha, 2016)
3.4.4 Key elements to achieve a successful digital marketing:
- Shirisha, 2016, there are 3 key factors for a successful Digital marketing:
- managing a diverse set of customer’s relationship through different channels (digital and traditional)
- deal with the constantly changing customer’s interactions.
- take big data, analyze it, make better choices in a shorter time.
3.4.5 Marketing segmentation:
Goding, S. 2018, mentioned in his book “This is marketing” the definition of Marketing segmentation as the act of grouping customers based in their mutual similarities, whether it be geographical, same culture or same needs. Ayuba, 2005 stated that if less attention was payed to Marketing segmentation poor products, poor distribution, poor promotions, poor pricing methods might take place.
Wendell R. Smith, 1950, defined Marketing segmentation as the market classification and grouping customers according to their different wants and needs, purchasing behavior, and habits.
Because the internet is virtual and embraces the mass, companies must consider a couple of things when conducting their marketing segmentation, such as the competition marketing strategies, available resources, product diversity, the life cycle of the product and the market diversification.
3.4.6 Marketing mix:
Marketing mix was originally created by E. Jerome McCarthy, 1960, and was defined as a set of tools and techniques used to be carried out as part of a Marketing plan, traditionally called the 4 P’s, product, price, place and promotion (professional academy, 2017).
Whether it’s a product or service, Quality is a key factor in every business, increasing customer satisfaction will always be the goal, and online Marketing only came to enhance this relationship by giving feedback from customers and receive insights for the company’s analysis. Pricing process is one of the elements that will generate a turnover for the firm (Muhammad Tariq, K. 2014).
Promotion is the effective way to spread Information about your organization in order to attract customers and create brand awareness. As for the place, it’s the distribution channels for that specific service or product, the location, the distributer and the timing will also have an impact on the decision making of the customer the sales, and it can also be chosen according to the customers target. (Muhammad Tariq, K. 2014).
- Jerome McCarthy 4P’s were not enough to analyzed and make better decisions anymore, therefore, The 4P’s were suggested to be increased to 7P’s, adding People, Process and Physical Evidence by Booms et Bitneris in 1981. However, that was not the only change that occurred to the 4P’s as it could be applied to the online marketing as well, as E-Product, E-Price, E-Promotion and E-Place (Loo, Poh Theng, 2016).
3.5 AI in Marketing:
“AI might be the biggest event for the humankind. However, if we didn’t learn how to avoid the risk it might be our last event.” Stephen Hawking
Cannella, J. 2018 describes Artificial intelligence (AI) as a burgeoning technology, industry, and field of study. Furthermore, it’s also defined as “an unconcealed ability to decipher problems and an inherent ability to learn escape procedures from problems” (Simmons and Chappel, 1998). We can as well define AI as the Technology that can find solutions to complex and any set of challenges. (Geru et all, 2018).
The AI conventions has been rising for a while now, some experts in the field claim that AI is to benefit the humankind and enhance the quality of life, others seems to strongly object. The New York University professor Yann LeCun, 2015, stated that inelegance is what distinguish us as humans, and AI is the extension of that quality. On the contrary, the technological entrepreneur Elon Musk, described it as this evil thing that people think it might not destroy humanity, while ifact if humanity stepped in the way of an AI task it will simply wipe it away (Vance, A. 2015)
On the other hand, people like Amit Ray showed both admiration and worries about AI, in his book “Compassionate artificial intelligence”, 2018 he suggested that as Artificial Intelligence is increasing in the world, emotional intelligence must find its way to leadership.
Despite the conflict of defining AI as a positive or a negative phenomenon, there is a big gap between what what people this AI is and how it actually operates in our everyday life. And with the increase of AI operating in most of our modern lives “e.g., tv, smartphones… etc” there is an overall conflict in academics view the online consumer engagement (Geru, M. and Capatina, A, 2018)
This lack of awareness offers marketers the chance to change the perception of consumers about AI (Cannela, J. 2018). For example, it offers marketer to personalize the experience of their customers, 96% of customer executives claiming that personalization has enhanced their customer relationships (Abraham et al., 2017).
Cannela, J. 2018, in his article Artificial Intelligence in Marketing reports that 42% of the conversation rates turned into actions (CATs), increasing the order value to 40%, & 600% higher the overall conversation rates. The article discusses thoroughly main aspects of what AI is and how it’s used in the marketing field, however, it doesn’t discuss how these strategies were implemented in the e-commerce marketing,
According to Isabella Dawson, 2019, in the next few years we are expected to see a full automated AI system that will take place over all marketing levels. She also stated in her research “Ten Applications of Artificial Intelligence in E-commerce Marketing “some of the most important application of AI in e-commerce Marketing, such as suggesting engaging content for social media, smarter messenger bots, and automated writing bots, but it doesn’t give a deep understanding on how or what outcome is expected from these techniques.
3.6 Digital multi-sided platforms (DMSP):
Multi-sided platform is basically the intermediaries that manage transaction among two or more groups of constituents for example consumers, sellers, advertisers, and suppliers (Hagiu, 2014; Gawer, 2009; Tiwana et al., 2010). A simple representation for multi sided platform is a shopping mall that brings both sellers and buyers in a medium place to exchange value (Chian Tan, F. 2016)
The success of the platform is defined by the number of groups can be attracted, the paying group will be more willing to pay in such platforms, and hence, charge them accordingly (Chian Tan, F. 2016)
A DMSP have two functions “a. reduces the search costs incurred by platform constituents when seeking transaction partners, and b. reduces the shared costs incurred during the actual transaction”.One example for this type of digital platforms is Google, where all groups are clustered, the paying group will pay to advertise their business or rent a platform (Chian Tan, F. 2016).
one of the downsides DMSP have is that with the larger number of these groups using the platforms, comes the complexity of the infrastructure both in technical and management level. (Chian Tan, F. 2016).
- Conclusion:
This chapter discussed the main concepts related to marketing, digital marketing, AI marketing and Multi-sided platforms. The impact they had on the marketing plan, and how they were developed through the years.
Alibaba company was also discussed and different perceptions about the company were made. Their financial report and how the overall company’s performance were presented. The future of Alibaba and what marketing strategies they are willing to adapt to increase their profitability and strengthen their basis were not discussed due to the fact that no sufficient information about them were mention in the literature I reviewed. Alongside other concepts of marketing “neural marketing” and its great effect into the success of online marketing was not discussed.
- Reference list:
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Alibaba group, December Quarter 2019 Results, (2020). Retrieved May 10, 2020. https://www.alibabagroup.com/en/ir/earnings
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Alt, Rainer and Österle, Hubert (2013) Electronic Markets on Internet marketing. Electronic Markets.
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Cannella, J. (2018), Artificiel Intelligence in marketing, USA: Arizona state university.
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