Analyzing the Emergence of Alibaba Group from Business Ecosystem Perspective

Business ecosystem perspective is a systematic thinking for business development. It has the form of dynamic and sophisticated relationships of participants or the intentional communities that are established based on the same business, economic purposes. Due to the fast-changing environment, business ecosystem perspective encourages co-evolution and value sharing among the participants to capture the opportunities in worldwide market. Therefore, this paper, from business ecosystem perspective, adopts case study and content research methodology to analyze a successful business development case – Alibaba Group. Under the leadership of Jack Ma, Alibaba has been developed as the largest company in e-Commerce business of China market. In 2014, Alibaba’s IPO in New York Stock Exchange was marked as one of the biggest IPO in the history. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the growth process regarding to the participation and evolution of business agents and the dynamic driving forces facilitating the emergence of business ecosystem, and to gain insights on management practices through the application of business ecosystem perspective. The research results show a couple of conclusions for building business ecosystem. First, the rapidly growing China e-Commerce market is the favorable external condition for Alibaba to emerge. Second, the integration of three critical elements, which are trading platform, payment system and logistics network, forms the solid infrastructure for Alibaba e-Commerce business ecosystem. Third, simultaneous developments among above critical elements are important in the emergence of particular business ecosystem. Finally, the role of major participants in every element is gradually evolving into a higher value creation and wider value sharing keystone player to increase the scope and diversity of business ecosystem. The strategic implications include the condition, structure and process for e-commerce business to emerge from business ecosystem perspective and can be referred for future studies.