E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding has won “consumer mindshare” amid its instant commerce push, according to company executives and analysts, to regain growth momentum in the highly competitive domestic market.
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The Chinese tech conglomerate’s New York-listed shares jumped 13 per cent to close at US$135 on Friday, after reporting robust earnings growth in the June quarter on the back of confidence on the mainland’s instant commerce sector.
On Friday’s earnings call, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu Yongming said the company has succeeded in scaling up user growth and building consumer mindshare – referring to consumers’ preference for its platform, compared with others – and the results so far have “gone beyond our own expectations”.
“With our newly achieved scale and market share, we are confident that we can achieve industry-leading efficiency in the long term,” Wu said.
His assessment reflects how Taobao Instant Commerce, an initiative launched in April, strengthened Alibaba’s domestic market position, as it met consumers’ need for on-demand delivery across a wide range of product categories, including food, groceries, electronics and apparel. Alibaba owns the Post.
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Jiang Fan, the head of Alibaba’s E-commerce Business Group, said on Friday’s earnings call that the company’s foray into instant commerce would “deliver positive economic benefits to the platform overall”, driven by increased efficiency and the high-frequency usage pattern in this segment.