阿里巴巴擬向國外輸出光棍節
With an opening concert from pop star Katy Perry and an appearance by former basketball player Kobe Bryant, China’s Singles Day sale — Alibaba’s annual orgy of consumption — kicks off this week with more glitz and money than ever before.
藉助流行歌手凱蒂.佩裏(Katty Perry)舉辦揭幕演唱會和退役籃球運動員科比.布萊恩特(Kobe Bryant)出場，阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的年度消費狂歡——中國光棍節銷售活動——本週以前所未有的排場和資金規模啓動。
The 24-hour sale, which takes place on November 11 (more graphically, 11.11) was not invented by Alibaba but the ecommerce group has made it a fixture of the retail calendar. Now the company plans to use the brouhaha around the event to launch itself beyond mainland China.
這一發生在11月11日的24小時銷售活動並不是阿里巴巴的發明，但這家電子商務集團已令該日期成爲零售業日曆中的一個固定節日。如今，該公司打算利用圍繞這一活動的喧囂，將其推廣至中國境外。
As a China-only event, Singles Day has already blown America’s Black Friday out of the water. Alibaba turned over $14.3bn on November 11 last year, compared to the $11.1bn spent online in the US over the whole five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, which includes Black Friday when retailers kick off the holiday season with big discounts.
作爲一個只存在於中國的活動，光棍節已經遠遠超越了美國的“黑色星期五”(Black Friday)。去年11月11日阿里巴巴的營業額達到143億美元。相比之下，從感恩節到“超級星期一”(Cyber Monday)的整個五天時間裏（涵蓋美國各零售商以大幅折扣啓動聖誕假日銷售的黑色星期五），美國的網購花銷爲111億美元。
The company is exploiting a trove of big data gathered through its retail, streaming and payment platforms in China, and this year it is launching a pilot programme targeting Singles Day shoppers in Hong Kong and Taiwan for the first time. Next year it plans to target Southeast Asia.
該公司正在挖掘通過其零售、流媒體及支付平臺收集的大數據。今年，它要在香港和臺灣首次推出面向光棍節購物者的試點計劃。明年，該公司還打算以東南亞地區的購物者爲目標。
It is also expanding via mergers and acquisitions, such as its stakes in Southeast Asian ecommerce group Lazada.
此外，該公司還通過併購——比如其在東南亞電子商務集團Lazada所持股份——不斷髮展壯大。
But internationalisation is a tough ask for Alibaba, say analysts, as it is for peers Baidu and Tencent. China’s tech trinity, collectively known as BAT, have grown rapidly at home, unshackled by international competition, but have taken little more than baby steps abroad. The reverse, analysts add, is also true: Amazon has failed to make much headway in China.
不過，分析師們表示，對阿里巴巴來說，國際化是一個艱鉅任務——這對其國內同行百度(Baidu)和騰訊(Tencent)也是如此。這三家中國科技公司合稱BAT，它們在國內因未受國際競爭約束而迅速增長，但在境外只能小步走。分析師們還表示，這一點反過來也成立：亞馬遜(Amazon)在中國就未能打開局面。
“There’s a tremendous challenge to take it global,” says Scott Likens, who heads PwC’s analytics and emerging technologies business in Hong Kong. “The model that works in China does not work outside China, or at least not as well.”
普華永道(PwC)香港分析及新興科技業務的負責人李敬思(Scott Likens)表示：“阿里巴巴走向全球面臨巨大挑戰。在中國管用的模式在國外未必有效，或至少不是同樣有效。”
Jack Ma, the one-time English teacher who founded Alibaba, has set a target of 2bn consumers in the next decade. In other words, come 2026, he expects roughly one in four people in the world to shop through Alibaba’s ecommerce platforms including Taobao and Tmall.
曾經當過英語老師的阿里巴巴創始人馬雲(Jack Ma)爲未來10年設定了一個20億消費者的目標。換句話說，到2026年，他預計全球將有大約四分之一的人通過阿里巴巴的電商平臺購物，包括淘寶和天貓。
These global ambitions are typically immodest. Mr Ma describes his plans for a “World e-Trade Platform” as a sort of World Trade Organisation without disputes, helping “the 80 per cent of companies and developing countries that cannot participate in world trade” to sell overseas.
這些全球雄心通常過於自信。馬雲稱他的“世界電子貿易平臺”計劃好比一種沒有糾紛的世界貿易組織(WTO)，幫助“80%沒有機會參與世界貿易的公司和發展中國家”在海外銷售商品。
His claims to be overturning the concept of ecommerce are equally bold. Alibaba is becoming a “consumer-to-business” company, rewriting the retail rule book, it says, so that shoppers, through big data, tell retailers what they want to buy.
他提出的顛覆電商概念的言論同樣大膽。阿里巴巴稱，該公司正變成一個“消費者對企業”的公司，重寫零售業規則，讓購物者通過大數據告訴零售商他們希望購買什麼。
“We will become the future of new retail,” says Daniel Zhang, Alibaba chief executive. “Product design and manufacturing will move in the direction of truly being driven by big data.”
“我們將變成新型零售業的未來，”阿里巴巴首席執行官張勇(Daniel Zhang)表示，“產品設計和製造將沿着真正由大數據推動的方向發展。”
In essence, this means Alibaba using past shopping and browsing habits to anticipate what consumers are interested in and to curate pages accordingly.
本質上，這意味着阿里巴巴正利用過去的購買和瀏覽習慣，據此預測消費者感興趣的商品和管理網頁。
Alibaba’s interests give it a much bigger trove of data on customers than that collected by international rivals such as Amazon. A Chinese consumer can (and does) spend a sizeable chunk of time in Alibaba’s web. Its 450m monthly mobile users spend an average 20 minutes per day on a personalised Taobao app, streaming service Youku Tudou has 580m subscribers, and Alibaba part-owns the payments platform Ant Financial.
阿里巴巴廣泛涉足各類業務，令其獲得了遠超亞馬遜等國際競爭對手的顧客數據。中國消費者可能（也確實）在阿里巴巴網站上花費大量時間。其4.5億月度移動用戶平均每天在淘寶個性化應用上逗留20分鐘，流媒體服務優酷土豆(Youku Tudou)的用戶達5.8億，阿里巴巴還持有支付平臺螞蟻金服(Ant Financial)部分股權。
“As a digital company they collect your behaviour,” says Steven Lu of Bain & Co’s technology practice in Shanghai. “And they’ve started to monetise that through the core business.”
“作爲一家數字公司，他們會收集用戶行爲，”貝恩公司(Bain & Co)駐上海技術業務主管Steven Lu表示，“他們已開始通過核心業務將其貨幣化。”
Providing more data to merchants means Alibaba can charge higher commissions, which on Tmall typically range from 0.4 to 5 per cent.
爲商戶提供更多數據意味着，阿里巴巴可以收取較高佣金，天貓的佣金費率一般介於0.4%至5%之間。
Typical ecommerce models are predicated on there being a physical product on a shelf with a price sticker attached, says PwC’s Mr Likens: customers select from the products on offer and pay the set price.
普華永道的李敬思表示，一般的電商模式基於貨架上有一個貼有標籤的實物商品：顧客從商家提供的商品中進行選擇，然後支付確定價格。
“But in the new world of BAT that doesn’t need to be the case,” he says. “The infrastructure is there, the data are there, the analytics are there. It’s just a matter of pulling them together. So pricing could be dynamic, as we have seen in other industries such as airlines and hotels.”
“然而，在BAT鼎立的新世界裏，情況不需要如此，”他表示，“有基礎設施，有數據，有分析工具。只是一個把這些集合在一起的問題。因此定價可以是動態的，就像我們在航空公司和酒店等其他行業看到的那樣。”
Data also help with logistics and inventory planning, adds Mr Lu. For example, shoppers can put their selected items in virtual carts ahead of Singles Day to assure delivery.
Steven Lu補充稱，數據還爲物流和庫存規劃提供了幫助。例如，購物者可以在光棍節之前將自己選定的商品加入虛擬購物車，以確保商品能夠送達。
By analysing how many times shoppers refresh their carts and refill them, Alibaba can measure the likelihood of purchase. That data can helping merchants estimate how much inventory they need and where.
通過分析購物者刷新和裝滿購物車的次數，阿里巴巴能夠衡量他們的購買機率。這些數據可以幫助商戶估計他們需要多少庫存，這些庫存應該部署在哪裏。
That in turn can help make logistics more efficient and, for merchants, reduce the time that capital is tied up, Mr Lu says.
Steven Lu表示，這進而可以幫助提高物流效率，而且對於商戶還可以縮短資金佔用時間。
While shoppers race to snap up bargains, merchants and industry players will be parsing the numbers to see if Alibaba can pull off a seventh year of turbocharged growth.
在消費者紛紛搶購低價商品之際，商戶和行業參與者將梳理數據，看阿里巴巴能否連續第七年實現迅猛增長。
“They’ve crushed every record every year, so how long can they sustain that?” asks Mr Likens. However, “the story has been good so far so I would not bet against them”.
“他們每年都打破紀錄，這種情況能持續多久？”李敬思問道。然而，“迄今的情況非常好，所以我不會看空他們”。
