AliBaba & The Vibrant Future of AliExpress

Since AliBaba has taken Wall Street by storm over the past month, breaking the record for the biggest IPO in global history, I figured it was about time Absolootely went a bit deeper into the world of AliExpress and its sister sites. I'll try make this super easy to read, because there's some pretty technical information I'd like to include.



The AliBaba group is China's biggest online commerce company, and also probably the biggest in the world ever. Here's a fantastic explanation by the Wall Street Journal, with lots of pretty pictures and infographics, that sums it up nicely.

AliExpress is one of their sites that specialises in selling Chinese products to Global consumers. Businesses wanting to buy wholesale goods in bulk buy from AliBaba.com, generally.

Proportionally, not a lot of people know about AliBaba in the Western world, but that is going to change. AliBaba is connecting Chinese producers to consumers worldwide, cutting out intermediaries, ie the retail sector. It's a recipe for success in this globalised world.

Before we discuss what AliBaba's success in Wall Street means, we'll have to do some learning. I've done a Finance 101 paper, so I sort of understand this stuff, and hopefully can translate money talk into simpler language.

AliBaba recently issued what is called an Initial Public Offering (IPO), which means it is now possible to buy 'Shares' of the company. A Share, or Stock, is an investment in the company. You pay them for the Share and receive payments as they use all the money collected from selling Shares to grow as a business. As the business grows, they can afford to start paying you back for investing in them. If they do well, you'll earn more than what you paid for the Share. If they don't do well, you'll make a loss. Also, a Share enables you a say in the company's operations, one vote per Share.

The IPO is a big deal because a company stands to earn a lot of money from selling Shares, and it shows how much confidence financial experts have in the business. AliBaba raised BILLIONS. Like, MULTIPLE BILLIONS. About US$21.8 billion on its first day of trading.



This means two major things for us AliExpress fans: 1) AliBaba have the funds to sustain and majorly improve AliExpress and other sites, and 2) People who know a thing or two about companies are predicting that AliBaba is going to be around for a while, doing some seriously major scale business.

Some companies don't have a big IPO and still go on to become massive, such as Google, and some companies offer IPOs when they're already a big deal, such as Facebook. It can mean a lot of things, but the main thing it will provide is opportunities for AliBaba to tighten its hold on the e-commerce market. AliBaba is now one of the biggest tech companies in the world and is going to be a huge part of the expanse of the Technological Age we're living in.

As for Absolootely, it means we totally jumped aboard the right bandwagon.

If you're interested/as big a business nerd as me, here's AliBaba's IPO Prospectus, which has some details as to how the company plans to expand and other such insights.
Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield

Pearl of Wisdom: Brand Loyalty School

This may seem like an obvious one, but there are actually a couple of simple things brand loyalists could do to keep their favourite small business running. If you really like a product or service, then you should reward the business by helping them grow, or at least not fail.

Not for their sake, dear God no, but so you can keep getting the things you like! Hashtag Selfless.


Accompanying us will be some cartoons from a fantastic 'marketoonist', Tom Fishburne.


Buy their Product Regularly

Firstly, there's something called the Double Jeopardy law which dictates that not only will a small business have less customers than a big business (which is logical), their customers will also buy less from them.

If you look at the products you buy, you will almost certainly notice that you tend to return to bigger brands every so often or most of the time. This is simply because they're generally cheaper and more available to purchase. The best way to support the smaller brands that you love isn't just to buy from them, it's to make an effort to buy from them as often as possible! Double Jeopardy causes the demise of numerous small businesses and it's not hard to counteract.



 Participate in Customer Surveys/Feedback

Most businesses conduct market research to get a better picture of how they can benefit you more. They also love love love getting feedback from you, positive or negative! If you have a problem with a brand that you support, tell them. And if you get an email asking you to fill in a questionnaire, do it.

Responding to market research is important if you want to live in a world where products and services are actually GOOD. Steve Jobs has kinda ruined this, because he was famously anti-research. He was a genius, but many businesses are now convinced that he disproved marketing research as being a crucial tool for businesses. 3d televisions were only consumer tested reactively, nobody actually asked consumers if we wanted 3d TVs!

absolootelymail@gmail.com if you have any feedback about this very site ;-)




 Tell People

This is really obvious and I suspect all of you already do this. Word-of-mouth is free and one of the best forms of advertising out there. People are more likely to buy a product if it was recommended by a friend and less likely to buy it if they hear something bad about it through their social grapevine.

In the spirit of Word-of-mouth, I'd like to give a shout out to Much Moore who do a fantastic Chocolate & Cookies ice-cream. It's delicious, you should try it.




I've kept this nice and short, relatively, which was hard, because I have so many more ideas and marketing theories that I wanted to discuss! Ah well...

Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield

Pearl of Wisdom: Let's Talk About Advertising.

The sickest I have ever felt in a lecture theatre has either been because I was hungover or because someone else was loudly vomiting out their insobriety, after sprinting out the door, or because the subject being covered was something I found morally outrageous. For example, a Psychology lecture on children who grew up in dungeons and a Marketing lecture in which the lecturer blindly preached about how wonderful and amazing Advertising. Both were very difficult to sit through. Both were equally revolting to me.

There are leading marketing academics who argue that the whole discipline of Marketing is for the consumer's own good. Harvard professor, Theodore Levitt, claims that it fulfils our basic human need for art and embellishment of an otherwise dreary existence. Advertising is "the poetry of capitalism" in the eyes of many. Naturally, to be a Marketer, you've got to believe in the field, or why would you be doing it at all? But there is a core sickness as the centre of the subject that needs to be evicted, for the sake of everyone.

To an extent, I agree with the idea that Marketing is essential and Advertising is an artform that benefits the consumer. I'm not even remotely against the whole field of Marketing (of which Advertising is merely a single element in a much larger subject), because it's what I want to do when I grow up and it's just as much my passion as Classical Studies is to an Arts student majoring in it. There is undoubtedly value, and art, in Advertising and you only really truly understand the world we live in if you have a grasp on the sheer power of Marketing.

However, I'm not studying Marketing because I think it's amazing and consumer-centric. I'm studying it because I think modern Marketing is a dreadful influence on our society, and that's obvious through the immense amount of study modern Business/Commerce students have to do on How To Not Become Corrupt & Amoral Tycoons, as a reaction to the corrupt state of Capitalism.

Cigarette advertising is the ultimate immoral practice.

B.O. was invented by Marketers. Before a company decided people should smell nice, there was no need for a product that would eliminate our natural scent. Why do most of us girls shave our legs obsessively? Because someone wanted to sell us something, so that someone created a Need and fulfilled it. It's just ridiculous, really. Clever, brilliant and ingenius, yes, but I don't think it can be argued that Advertising is "for the consumer's own good" when it spends so much time telling us we're terrible, oh, and buy this product that will make you less terrible.

BO smells better than BO mixed with Deo, to be honest.

So much of our daily ritual can be traced back to those very businesses who took our hard-earned cash and used it to pollute our planet, bribe politicians and otherwise make our world a little bit shittier a place. Why do you do what you do? Because Marketing. Marketing is just what happens when someone profits from an idea, a social attitude, a formation of cultural practices. It's pervasive and the all-powerful force behind our civilization.

Of course, there is some great Advertising and it does do good things a lot of the time. Free-to-air television is backboned by Advertising, communities are created around brands and products, and real art and healthy messages are displayed on large-scale platforms. As a Marketing student, I love what it can do. As a consumer and a member of society, I'm not going to stand for the negative aspect being ignored.

Dove is a tricky subject. One on hand, they have amazingly positive advertising, but is that really for OUR benefit?

We like to chat about larger issues in the field of Consumerism here on Absolootely, so expect more of these heftier posts and please tell us your thoughts on the matters at hand!

Personally, I think that Brands add value to our lives by turning commodities into experiences, which is one of the key ethical beliefs Absolootely holds, and by bringing people together. But I also find the sheer power of the Brand a little abhorant and unnerving, especially when Advertisers target kids and people with low self-esteem, and when my nation demands that I vote in an election based solely on how well marketed a Politician is ("Yes We Can" is Marketing, not Politics). I think it's super important to discuss the morality of Marketing, because it has the capacity to do real damage to people and our world in general. With that in mind, the next person who accuses me of 'studying the art of manipulation' will get punched...... in the mind, by a furious rant (I'm a pacifist)!

 Overall, do you think your life would be improved if there was an absence of Advertising? What is your general, nonspecific stance on the subject?

Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield

Pearl of Wisdom x Fool's Gold: A Pair of Fake Chanel Earrings

Guys, I totes read an academic paper and I think you'll be interested in what it's about.

"Omg, what is this, what sane person actually reads academic papers?!" We're called students.

I get forced into reading a lot of marketing papers for my course, and they are very tedious most of the time, but sometimes they are absolute gold. I swear 90% of a marketing degree is consumer tips, backed up by great research.

This study* is an example of some knowledge that is actually very useful to have up your sleeve. It basically provides solid evidence that people will treat you better if you're wearing a luxury brand logo.
"A person who displays a luxury-brand label, not an ordinary label, is indeed perceived as wealthier and receives higher status ratings than a person who does not display a label, as predicted by notions of conspicuous consumption." *
Conspicuous consumption means that a good or service is used by you in front of an 'audience'. Like, lots of people are going to see you driving your car, but a lot less people will see you using your shampoo. We tend to focus more on the things we consume in public, because of associations and branding and all that stuff.

Note the blu tack in the reflection...
I'm a huge fan of psychology and I love employing little Life Tricks. For example, the more you show your palms, the most trustworthy you're perceived as being (fun fact). But I don't have any luxury brand items, unless you count a pretty sweet colour screen Casio calculator or a Samsung Galaxy from three generations ago. Oh, I have prescription Ray Ban glasses, but I think they're pretty embarrassing these days. Thanks, hipsters.

Enter Aliexpress.

Designer knock offs are super common, I don't need to tell you that. I've seen more fake Louis Vuitton wallets than wallets of any other sort. It's very frowned upon to buy fake, because that's kinda a sign that you're trying too hard and being fake yourself. However, we don't really feel the same way about dupes from less expensive brands or dupes that don't have a logo on them. I have a fake Lazy Oaf shirt and a lot of the stuff I own is 'inspired' by designer brands via trickle-down trends or plain ol' copying.

I guess the difference is aesthetics vs brand equity (value). I have a pair or three of fake Mise En Dior earrings, that I bought before J-Law and Rihanna started wearing the real things and alerting me to Dior's originals. I bought them for sheer aesthetic reasons. Most of Dior's earrings are, to be honest, kinda awful, but seem pretty because they have the brand name attached to them. Buying a fake pair of this variety would be for brand equity reasons and that's a little shady.


HOWEVER, I'm all for shady, in small doses! I've already ordered myself a pair of fake Chanel earrings (hopefully more convincing than my DIY ones, pictured above), and I intend to use them for practical reasons. The study found that wearing luxury brands helps in job interviews and collected donations, and other cases. It's a very small investment for some pretty great benefits.
"Seven laboratory and field experiments supported the prediction that people treat a person who displays a luxury brand more favourably than a person who does not or, more accurately, than the same person when he or she wears identical clothing without a brand label." *
Sure, the paper does make it clear that the reason luxury brands make people seem higher status is because they seem like they have more wealth, which is totally offset by having a fake pair of earrings. But who is really going to ask "Are those real?" And if some punk does ask you that, I give you permission to lie.

I'm recommending that everyone should have a convincing, logo emblazoned, piece of fake designer wear, to pull out when you feel like you might need a bit of a boost. Earrings are really great, because they're usually just logos and they're small enough to not be noticeably fake. Also, I think a pair of Chanel, etc, earrings is something a lot of girls would have, even if the rest of their outfit was from Glassons or TopShop. It's something a wealthy grandmother would pass down, or a special birthday present from some very nice parents.

Below, you shall find a wonderful collection of the best fake earrings I found. Bar the ones I made, of course. I went for ones that were very simple and looked expensive, because they're more convincing. If you want to search for more over on Aliexpress or eBay, searching with the brand name won't get you far. Use "brand earrings" or "logo earrings", and scroll through some pages.






*Nelissen, Rob and Marijn HC Meijers (2011), "Social Benefits of Luxury Brands as Costly Signals of Wealth and Status," Evolution and Human Behavior, 32 (5), 343-55.
Further Quotes from Nelissen & Marijn, 2010:

"Participants in the brand-label condition found the applicant more suitable for the job... and also suggested he should earn more than the applicant in the no-label condition."

"Participants in the brand-label condition complied with the request on 52.2% of the occasions, compared to 13.6% in the no-label condition."

"Average donations were higher in the brand-label condition than in the no-label condition."

"Transfers in the luxury-label condition exceeded those in the ordinary-label condition."


Fun .gif Google made for me...
Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield
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