Introduction
Technological advancement is an initiative that prominently fostered the intensification of business competition globally. One of the entities facing significant evolution is online marketing in China. An excellent example is the emergence of the Freshippo supermarket that merges both online and offline aspects during shopping for clients. In 2016, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, spearheaded the establishment of the retail store, and within four years, the company recorded at least 250 outlets (Tatum, 2021, p.1). The critical strategy engulfs automating the experience for the customers. As a result, an individual accesses the website and purchases the packaged and transported products to the desired destination. It is a practice that involves the use of facial recognition for payment processes. Primarily, Freshippo is a component of the Alibaba organization that provides an ultimate experience for consumers concerning buying goods in a supermarket.
The core factor that fosters customer loyalty is the accessibility of adequate information about products and services. It is an initiative that assists individuals in deciding the ultimate purchasing value. Therefore, incorporating social marketing poses dynamic benefits based on the effective provision of knowledge about a company and its performance in the market. One of the benefits is branding that improves an organization’s presence within the worldwide business environment (Tatum, 2021, p.2). It is an approach that determines Freshippo’s identity and association with a particular segment. After establishing the supermarket, the subsidiary faced profound competition from other organizations, mainly JD that reconstructed the initiative to achieve the core objective of attaining a higher market share.
Technological advancement rendered the transformation of business transactions across all sectors apart from the grocery department. Fresh food and fruits are highly perishable and pose an imminent risk of losses due to the effect among customers. As a result, Alibaba Company developed the concept of Freshippo intensifying the online and offline enterprise activities. According to Jack Ma, it is crucial to integrate physical and digital aspects in shopping due to the impact on the flow of operations and interdependence across the industry (Tatum, 2021, p.3). On the other hand, JD focused on intensifying the engagement of clients while purchasing in a mall through the provision of text messages to the mobile phones regarding the best alternatives and pricing offers for certain entities. In this case, JD emerged as a significant Freshippo’s competitor based on the strategic management of information sharing and processing various practices. Ideally, computerization of buying experiences across the Chinese community significantly empowered people with solutions on boosting convenience and price worthiness to satisfy their needs and wants.
Benefits of Freshippo’s Technological System
Technology fostered the easy accessibility of goods information based on the varieties and quality. Therefore, the availability of product information empowered consumers with the knowledge to utilize while making a purchasing decision (Yan, 2014, p.2). A computer is a tool that empowers corporate society with the capacity to boost its operation innovations. In a different spectrum, the emergence of social media fostered the digitization of word-of-mouth due to the dynamic channels of interaction. The elements promoting relationship encompass TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The integration of these platforms in the marketing strategies for the companies fosters the digitization of word-of-mouth. The conventional global market segmentation is a phenomenon that engulfs four categories. The levels include demography, geography, behavioral, and psychographic sects (Alibaba.com, 2021, p.1). The rise of the niche market significantly contributes to the growth and development of Freshippo enterprise.
Alibaba can experience this benefit in high proportions due to its primary operation baseline that includes the use of cloud computing for advertising and business management. Digitization of word-of-mouth is a concept that fosters a profound impact on the brand business. In research, at least 92% of customers acknowledge a particular brand based on word-of-mouth promotion from family and friends (Leppäniemi et al., 2017, p.164). The researchers further argue that it is easier for an individual to believe a colleague regarding a product or service and its value. A corporation’s reputation highly influences the rate of loyalty among potential clients due to the impact of referrals. A company’s success depends on the frequency of consumer intimation since it is a cheaper and convenient marketing strategy. The reputation of commodities reflects the previous experiences. As a result, a person develops expectations based on the past performance outline from other purchasers (Leppäniemi et al., 2017, p.165). Nevertheless, fame is a risk initiative for a company cause of the interplay with the competitive advantage.
The fragile state of popularity based on the biased reviews from other individuals cultivates the essential quality of marketing strategy to the global market condition. The digitization of word-of-mouth is a factor that fostered the prominent issue of brand business due to the empowerment of customer reviews to the worldwide consumer market (Tatum, 2021, p.2). The focus on branding is an initiative that overwhelms the impact of pricing and its influence on consumer loyalty owing to the adequate provision of knowledge about the organization and its operations.
Another benefit fostered by social marketing is the provision of adequate information for upstream decision-makers. One of the significant factors that affect business competence is the role of management in the decision-making process. On the one hand, the administration’s mandate is to ensure that employees successfully attain the objectives while enhancing optimal satisfaction levels among the consumers. On the other hand, the executive contributes to the growth of an enterprise based on the necessity of interpreting the financial data gathered from the daily cash flow records. Researchers establish different tools that influence the interpretation and presentation of information pose dynamic attributes (Oboh & Ajibolade, 2017, p.119). In this case, the integration of details concerning consumer behavior and economic performance plays a vital role in improving the development of strategic concepts for business growth.
Customer service experience is a phenomenon that is essential to the competence of a business internationally. During the evolution, there was a paradigm shift involving the elevation of consumers as the kings and queens. It is a situation attributed to the change in the control of product and service information. Organizations dominated the market and manipulated the clients’ preferences based on their key goals and values (Kennedy, 2017, p.347). However, modern society rendered proficiency in the accessibility of crucial knowledge based on the ability to choose the preferred corporation objectively.
Boosting communication within an organization such as Alibaba poses a competitive advantage due to the impact on the coordination of operations. Efficient sharing of information within a corporation fosters the development of a functional corporate culture enshrining a teamwork environment (Duralia, 2018, p.92). One of the highly valued assets of an enterprise is human resources. The proper coordination of operations among employees translates to an excellent consumer service experience that attributes loyalty across the clientele base.
Online Ethical Issues of Freshippo
Over the decades, the evolutionary business practice perspective fostered a significant impact on ethical behavior through physical and digital engagements. Staff (2018) indicated that the provision of the first environmental, social, and governance report fostered the necessity of sustainability (1). Jack Ma postulates that the document steers the corporate’s initiative to integrate profitability and the inherent social growth and development. In this case, it is the responsibility of the institution to enhance the effective trickle-down of benefits to the local communities. An excellent example is incorporating measures demanding the prioritization of purchasing the regionally produced goods for sale to the consumers. The approach improves the monetary circulation and the advancement of economic activities.
Implications of Ethical and Legal Factors
Digital platforms pose a phenomenal ethical issue among the Alibaba employees, and mainly in the Freshippo subsidiary. According to Shaw (2018), working in the organization is akin to a lifestyle cause of the dynamism in the practices (2). The company optimally integrated socialism with technological advancement as an elevating aspect regarding the workers’ productivity. In this case, a significant percentage of the laborers improve their living quotients based on the privileges offered, such as group weddings and the rings symbolizing loyalty. However, the concept applied into Freshippo’s business strategy limits the connectivity among people physically and transforms the ideology across the digital frameworks. Researchers further establish that although the management team appreciates employee interaction, it is an ethical issue across the online perspectives. The main reason lies in the lack of privacy towards determining the clients’ preferences as a foundation of optimizing the service experience. Therefore, the legal concern involves the self-regulation upon the accessibility of purchasers’ details despite the appeal on increasing the standards of operations.
Strategies to Improve Marketing Communication
Different businesses utilize various approaches to establish their competitive advantages. According to researchers, positioning is an ideal promotional initiative that leads to developing an identity of an organization such as a convenience store (Thabit & Raewf, 2018, p.1). It is an essential factor for a company due to its impact on the market segmentation strategy. On the one hand, place-making attributes to a corporation’s approach for a competitive advantage. On the other hand, the perspective empowers the management with the knowledge about consumers based on their behavior and reaction to the dynamic preferential and perceived value.
Pricing Marketing Mix Strategy
The Alibaba Company employs the cost leadership strategy in its business to reach the consumers at the lowest prices possible for the commodities. At the same time, the compact cost does not dissuade the business from achieving competence with what they are supplying to their clients. Customers find the quality of the products and services acceptable as they meet their standards and sometimes surpass them (Shaw, 2018, p.3). In constructing large-scale operations which will assist the firms in reducing the charge of each unit, the firms can achieve cost-leadership.
Any services and product’s extra feature is eliminated, thus saving the company a lot of cash based on the necessity of economies of scale. In this case, the association ensures the provision of a variety of products at a lesser cost for the international clientele (Alibaba.com, 2021, p.1). Over the decades, the management team realized that apart from the provision of different types of commodities, there is an emergent issue of value despite the pricing. One of the essential niche market segments is characterized by the ability to establish an integral interdependence between the consumer service experience and the diversity of goods. Primarily, it is vital that the administration incorporate the ideal marketing mix approach under the spectral view of social marketing.
Product Marketing Mix Strategy
Product refers to the actual item being sold by a company and, in this case, Freshippo as an Alibaba subsidiary. One of the competitive advantages of Alibaba encompasses the proficient utilization of diversity of commodities hence empowering the consumers with the power to determine the quality of service experience. It is an approach that boosts the enterprise’s proficiency in the global business market. The primary duty of the marketing team involves integrating Alibaba’s objective to optimize profitability and loyalty with the clients’ focus on value for the purchase (Yan, 2014, p.1). Therefore, it is crucial to determine the branding effectiveness based on the quality and variety of goods.
Place Marketing Mix Strategy
Alibaba’s subsidiary, Freshippo, focuses on securing a significant percentage of the global market through the web forum than physical convenience stores. Hence, the company is retail, attaining products from manufacturers at a wholesale cost and selling to end-users relatively lower. The corporation utilizes the cloud platform as a rental for other enterprises to advertise and sell their products worldwide in a different spectrum. Freshippo keeps earning commissions even when it allows other e-commerce businesses to use its platform to sell their items. Moreover, the institution achieves success as it processes the sales through itself and leases some space for the sellers and the customers (Yan, 2014, p.3). In addition, this sees the enterprise make a lot of profits as it provides quality services. But the customers also benefit from the transactions a lot as the costs of the commodities they are acquiring are very low and affordable to them. The online-based supermarket has a vast range of products that it stocks for its sales. This allows the firm to eliminate the additional care and expenditures from the individual units of products.
Promotion Marketing Mix Strategy
Freshippo has highly related economies of scale to the strategic management process since the company has used the factor to its advantage by ensuring that the gains are utilized for the customer in the low pricing of products. This is further enabled through bulk shopping, whereby a client is offered an opportunity to purchase more goods under one click and at a lower price (Yan, 2014, p.2). The economies of scale enabled the provision of choice to the customer through various products, thereby offering a high-end customer experience thus satisfaction. This has highly contributed to the organization’s strategic management process of delivering the ultimate customer experience.
The feasibility of the allowable execution strategy of cost leadership ensures exploiting the external factors using the available resources in a new dimension rather than trying for new skills acquisition for any different opportunity since it may deem expensive. The utilization of the approach of the resource-based view highly contributes towards the successful implementation of the strategy. The organization identifies and classifies the available resources and structure them according to their nature of diversity. Using the VRIO resources, the management evaluates for competitive advantage (Johansson, 2021, p.1). An excellent example to explain the appropriate implementation procedures of cost leadership is the case of Freshippo when they reduced the workforce in their stations and replaced them with high tech machines and robots that operated efficiently and effectively, reducing the cost of production and distribution and improving the output level per time limit offered. That is one of the most appropriate implementations of cost leadership strategy that has proven performance for Freshippo dominance in the market.
Different organizations implement various interaction settings on a shared domain of the company, such as through the organization emails, and social media workgroups. On the one hand, the networks fostered the creation of a niche platform among the employees hence intensifying the spirit of teamwork. On the other hand, the forums enhanced the emergence of sophisticated platforms, potentially risking the violation of workers’ rights through increased interactions. Fundamentally, these entities profoundly influence the behavior and performance of the staff within the organization (Lopatovska et al., 2019, p.166). The substantial value of the internet community to the labourer and organization enhances the dynamism in the different ethical codes that initiate reasoning and conduct while fostering brand positioning and digitization of word-of-mouth.
Social media contributes to the intensification of flow of information internationally. The increase flow of information rendered the emergence of a global village as a niche market for businesses. Therefore, the internet community has directly and indirectly impacted businesses facing both external and internal challenges (Wang & Kim, 2017, p.15). In this case, the elevated rate of knowledge acquisition about digital forums, the higher the impact on exploiting the utilities in improving business competence. The knowledge and skills addition renders that the entity emerged as a dominant platform of interaction among people, thus offering businesses opportunities to exploit from the emergent niche (Pourkhani et al., 2019, p.223). These capabilities include brand awareness, loyalty, product innovation, diversification, and global network. The interaction between the various tools and intellect with the capabilities contributes to improving performance and sales volume. Social media is an entity that plays a vital role towards empowering the participants with proficient knowledge regarding dynamic ideologies.
Businesses collect information about their competence level through distinct capability entities and social media. These are referred to as strategic points, whereby companies use to create competent marketing responses. The entities influence the capability of businesses through the acquisition of strategic and qualified knowledge and skills (Moy et al., 2020, p.23). It is an approach that enhances the integration of distinct factors of production to satisfy the needs and wants of the clientele.
Social media is an entity that steered the emergence of a global village prompting the efficient sharing of information across various domains. Research by Moy et al. (2020, p.23) indicates that entrepreneur use the attained insights to reconstruct the marketing operations. Freshippo focuses on the ideal solution of improving its efficiency in customer service experience through branding initiatives. On the one hand, the corporation fosters a relationship-building between management and employees based on the derivation of crucial details about consumer behavior. On the other hand, the enterprise poses a dynamic proficiency across the global market based on optimizing cloud computing and online business.
Cause-related marketing refers to the ability to implement strategies based on the accrual benefits between two parties. In this case, the core factor involves the provision of marketing space for different companies to advertise their product while primarily promoting Freshippo’s essence in acquiring a position in the global clientele. Therefore, all stakeholders attain various levels of competence through the cloud computing entity of the online business (Wayne, 2018, p.725). The emergence of the worldwide village encapsulates the intensified transfer of information, fostering the prominent factor of a dynamic niche market and behavioral patterns. A case of adding value to the products and as well as a rarity perspective of the same manipulates the characteristic of the market for Alibaba’s side. An excellent example is the diversification of the product to fit the demands and needs of the evolving customers, as well as establishing effective evaluation techniques.
Cybersecurity Issue Facing Freshippo
The initiative to integrate the brick-and-mortar supermarket with online shopping activities is an initiative that enhanced the development of a niche market. The market is characterized by the essence of product information and diversity over the pricing during the purchasing decision-making process. Primarily, Freshippo achieves the goal and vision by Jack Ma involving the intersectionality and incorporation of grocery store transactions into the digital platforms. Although Alibaba’s management team faces profound legal issues with the Chinese government due to ethical practice, the forum rendered an in-depth oversight upon the importance of the computerized system operation. After the advent of COVID-19, the majority of the countries were locked down to prevent the spread and enhance the control of the illness. As a result, individuals faced difficulty in accessing grocery stores to buy food. While some groups encountered the challenge during the pandemic, Freshippo offered an opportunity for other personnel concerning consumptive behavior (Alibaba.com, 2021, p.2). In this case, Alibaba’s subsidiary steered the evolutionary tactic towards regulating movement and interaction among the parties.
Cybersecurity is an issue hindering the advancement of Freshippo’s marketing initiative cause of the prominent risk of data leakage to third parties. The artificial intelligence structure focuses on the study of consumer behavior and determining the pattern. As a result, JD and Freshippo attain insights concerning the alternate solutions to the needs and wants of the clients. However, researchers establish that it is the responsibility of the technical team to indicate the compelling aspects in alleviating the adverse impact across the local and international community (Sun, 2021, p.1). The reliance on computerized structures poses imminent risks and opportunities towards increasing the competence level within the marketplace.
In conclusion, social marketing is a multifaceted phenomenon that provides significant opportunities for business competence hence boosting the quality of operations. On the one hand, the management attains significant empowerment tools based on the needs of the consumers from the different views and remarks from online platforms and forums. In this case, it is an essential factor in the marketing for Freshippo due to the ability to gear the strategic administration and implementation of policies based on the performance of employees and consumer loyalty phenomenon digitally and physically. The use of cost leadership and diversity of commodities are the primary approaches that attract clients to Amazon Inc. and its competence. An optimal and functional interdependence between workers, executives, and other stakeholders relies on incorporating networking platforms to promote the activities and their profitability.
Reference List
Alibaba.com. (2021). ALIBABA.COM: How to succeed in the global b2b e-commerce marketplace. [online] Hpac.com.
Duralia, O. (2018). Integrated marketing communication and its impact on consumer behavior. Studies in Business and Economics, 13(2), pp.92-102.
Johansson, J., (2021). Launching a product to Amazon marketplace: Selling at Amazon.com.
Kennedy, A.M. (2017). Macro-social marketing research: philosophy, methodology, and methods. Journal of Macromarketing, 37(4), pp.347-355.
Leppäniemi, M., Karjaluoto, H., and Saarijärvi, H. (2017). Customer perceived value, satisfaction, and loyalty: the role of willingness to share information. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 27(2), 164-188.
Moy, M. M., Cahyadi, E. R., and Anggraeni, E. (2020). The impact of social media on knowledge creation, innovation, and performance in small and medium enterprises. Indonesian Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship (IJBE), 6(1), 23-23.
Oboh, C.S. and Ajibolade, S.O. (2017). Strategic management accounting and decision making: A survey of the Nigerian Banks. Future Business Journal, 3(2), pp.119-137.
Pourkhani, A., Abdipour, K., Baher, B., and Moslehpour, M. (2019). The impact of social media on business growth and performance: A scientometrics analysis. International Journal of Data and Network Science, 3(3), 223-244.
Shaw, A. (2018). Group weddings and loyalty rings: Inside Alibaba, secrets of an e-commerce giant. [online]
Staff, A. (2018). Alibaba group issues first ESG report | Alizila. [online] Alizila.
Thabit, T. and Raewf, M. (2018). The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).
Wang, Z. and Kim, H.G. (2017). Can social media marketing improve customer relationship capabilities and firm performance? Dynamic capability perspective. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 39, pp.15-26.
Wayne, M.L. (2018). Netflix, Amazon, and branded television content in subscription video on-demand portals. Media, Culture & Society, 40(5), pp.725-741.
Yan, S. (2014). Chinese courts are selling seized assets on Alibaba’s Taobao. [online] CNNMoney.
Sun, L. (2021). Why I’ll never own Alibaba stock | The Motley Fool. [online] The Motley Fool.
Tatum, M. (2021). Alibaba has invented the supermarket of the future. [online] WIRED UK.