Amazon opens store on Alibaba's Chinese site, struggling to conquer China
The U.S. online retailer Amazon.com has opened a flagship store in local competitor Alibaba Group Holding’s online marketplace, in an attempt to expand in China.
Amazon has thus become Alibaba’s customer, paying a commission to the latter for each transaction.
The US company has faced an uphill battle in China, where Alibaba dominates the growing e-commerce market.
Launched this week, Amazon’s store inside Alibaba’s Tmall offers a limited number of product
categories, which include imported food, women’s shoes, toys and kitchen
equipment.
The food section, for example, includes Blue Diamond almonds and Californian wine, while the toy section carries international brands such as Lego and Crayola.
Retailers and brands
that operate their flagship stores on Tmall pay a commission to Alibaba
for each transaction. Having become a Tmall seller, Amazon
AMZN became Alibaba’s
BABA customer.
According to a Daiwa Capital Markets
report on e-commerce in China, Amazon had just a
1.3% share of the total business-to-consumer market in China in the
third quarter of last year, a 13.8 percentage point loss of market share
from the same quarter in 2008.
