Saturday, December 17, 2011

Alibaba’s eTao forecasts substantial growth

News this week: Over the next three to five years, eTao, the Alibaba Group’s online shopping search engine, is aiming to capture 15% to 20% of China’s Internet search market – primarily focused on shopping and product comparison searches.

According to an Alibaba spokesperson, eTao‘s short-term focus will not be on profitability, but to allow users to search for more online and offline products including those from overseas retail websites. The company said it would invest over US$155 million on a marketing campaign that includes both online and offline advertisements.

Separately, Alibaba Group announced this week a record US$675 million worth of transactions were conducted on its Taobao Marketplace, Alibaba’s C2C ecommerce platform.

Alibaba Group’s chairman and CEO, Jack Ma, said the company is targeting to raise the combined volume of transactions on Taobao Marketplace and the retail-focused Taobao Mall from US$63 billion last year to US$157 billion in 2012.

This post is excerpted from BSG's weekly e-newsletter which is part of our subscription research service, BSG Tracker. Visit our website to find out more about this service. You can also follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates.

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