The Alibaba Group is based in Zhejiang, China, and it is one of the biggest tech companies in the world. The brand was founded by Yun Ma and Chung Tsai in 1999 with the primary purpose of providing technological, internet, and e-commerce services to its customers. And this brand has become highly successful, despite the large number of competitors it has.

#1. Tencent

  • Founded: 1998
  • Headquarters: Shenzen, China

Need to know

Across all technological and e-commerce sectors, Tencent is the biggest competitor to Alibaba. Generating over $20 billion in revenue in 2020, Tencent Holdings Limited is a company that offers several online products to its customers. One of the biggest parts of Tencent’s success is the WeChat platform, which is the company’s own social media network. This platform has about 1.2 billion active monthly users, and it also has its own payment service called WeChat Pay.

The main businesses that Tencent and Alibaba do are quite different, but they tend to use the same technologies to attract their target market. So, they regularly rival each other in getting the best big data services, AI, and cloud computing. 

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#2. Shopify

  • Founded: 2006
  • Headquarters: Ottawa, Canada

Need to know

Shopify is an eCommerce platform based in Canada with over a million stores. Shopify links thousands of small and medium-sized businesses to customers from around the world and this helps them to expand their customer base and boost sales. They had a revenue of almost $3 billion in 2020. Although Alibaba generated about 30 times the revenue of Shopify in 2020, Shopify has a significantly better gross margin. 

Shopify offers online retailers a wide range of services including shipping, marketing, handling payments, as well as providing mediums for engaging with customers. The platform allows these retailers to push their brands out to their target market and monitor their sales growth accordingly. Shopify might not be as big as Alibaba, but that seems to be the feature helping them grow. They cater to a lot of small business owners and this has given the brand a great image.

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#3. Rakuten

  • Founded: 1997
  • Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan

Need to know

Rakuten is an eCommerce company that was established in Japan but now operates in about 29 countries. Rakuten is a company that is highly diversified, just like Alibaba, venturing into online content, communication services, as well as fintech. The company generated about $13 billion in revenue in 2020.

Rakuten continues to expand past Japan and Asia through different joint ventures as well as through acquiring several other brands. They have acquired some brands like Ebates, Buy.com, and others. However, a lot of their sales and customer base comes from the Japanese market, and it is one of the fastest-growing eCommerce platforms in the world. 

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#4. Walmart

  • Founded: 1962
  • Headquarters: Arkansas, United States

Need to know

With its over two million employees, approximately 12,000 stores in 27 countries, and 265 million average weekly customers, Walmart is one of the largest brands in the world. This company has a massive marketplace that enables different brands and vendors to sell their products. Their revenue in 2020 was over $500 billion!

Their eCommerce sector is primarily reliant on the US market, although it has a higher e-commerce growth rate than Alibaba. Walmart uses a large chain of grocery stores, hypermarkets, and department stores to provide low-cost products to their customers. Walmart also owns Flipkart, which is one of the top competitors of Alibaba in India. It is the biggest brick-and-mortar retailer in the world, and it continues to innovate new ways to help customers and third-party vendors to carry out their business easily and efficiently.

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#5. Priceline

  • Founded: 1997
  • Headquarters: Connecticut, United States

Need to know

Priceline is one of the top eCommerce companies in the world, with a significant amount of its popularity coming from travel-related purchases on its platform. This company provides a wide range of flight-related services including hotel booking, car rentals, as well as flight bookings. Several packages contain the flight, car, and hotel bookings combined. 

In recent years, Priceline has grown past just the flight-related services, offering its customers groceries and gasoline. Their online store provides a wide range of products from baby clothes to cosmetics, and much more. They have all kinds of special offers and discounts available to customers, and this has helped them gain a large following and become one of Alibaba’s top competitors. 

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#6. Amazon

  • Founded: 1994
  • Headquarters: Seattle, Washington

Need to know

For a company that started as an online bookstore, Amazon has grown far past expectations. It is now the largest eCommerce platform as well as the most valuable brand in the world. Just like Alibaba, this platform also allows third-party vendors to sell their products. It is the primary retailer in North America, and it managed to garner a revenue of $380 billion in 2020. 

This company was founded by multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos, and it is now a leader in online retail, helping other retailers to boost sales growth through its platform. Amazon and Alibaba have quite similar business models, although one is a leader in China and the other in North America. Amazon is so highly revered because it continues to break boundaries in technology, ensuring its customers get the most personalized recommendations possible while also providing them with a wide set of product options. Amazon has also been working strategically to grow its customer base by making smart partnerships and investing in several local businesses. 

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#7. eBay

  • Founded: 1995
  • Headquarters: San Jose, California

Need to know

eBay is the mastermind behind modern trade-by-barter, and it now operates in about 30 countries in the world. It has a business model that attracts small and medium-sized businesses with about 20 million sellers using the platform in 2020 alone. The buyers, however, were almost 200 million, showing that eBay has quite a strong customer base. The company generated a revenue of $10 billion in 2020, and it is the foremost platform for customer-to-customer selling in the world. 

eBay has a pretty strong presence in several European countries like France, Italy, Germany the Uk, and Spain, while also reaching other areas like Japan and Australia. This is the main advantage that eBay holds over Alibaba, as it has a far wider reach. eBay also acquired PayPal which allows the company to get some extra revenue through its payment solutions, and it has witnessed strong and consistent growth through the years. 

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#8. JD (Jingdong)

  • Founded: 2000
  • Headquarters: Beijing, China

Need to know

JD is the largest online retailer in China, offering its users a wide range of products including clothes, home appliances, books, and so much more. It is a member of the Fortune Global 500, and the company reported a revenue of about $114 billion in 2020. It has a pretty large logistics network across several different sectors and this has allowed JD to be so successful in attracting a large number of customers and massive sales.

This company started as a small electronics store, and it now competes with Alibaba as one of the biggest eCommerce platforms in the world. Their main business strategy is providing products and services in the categories that are most needed by their customers as well as offering products made by the most popular brands. The company recently established JD Worldwide to grow its international exposure and increase visibility outside of China. Its strong technology platform, as well as the excellent logistics network, prove to be the main competitive advantage that JD has over Alibaba.

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References

  1. https://www.marketing91.com/top-10-alibaba-competitors/
  2. https://businesschronicler.com/competitors/alibaba-competitors-analysis/
  3. https://www.globalfromasia.com/alibaba-competitors/
  4. https://bstrategyhub.com/alibaba-competitors-alternatives/
  5. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/042716/baba-who-are-alibabas-main-competitors.asp