What can you learn from the Double 11 Festival?

History of double 11  

Double 11, also known as “Bachelor’s day”, was originally celebrated by whoever who still a bachelor on November 11th. On this day, young people will hold bachelor parties to create couples or simply have fun. Some choose to end their bachelor life by showing love or proposing for marriage. In recent years, this day was reinvented to online bazaar known as “Bachelor’s Day Promotion” or Singles Day Promotion (Double 11) by Alibaba.

In 2009, Alibaba held the first Double 11 Shopping Festival on Taobao.com, storming the online shopping for the very first time. In 2018, more than millions of business owners, cooperating with e-commerce sites, are poised to rock the Double 11 shopping festival. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd alone, logged 213.5 billion yuan (USD 30.7 billion) in sales for its annual Singles’ Day extravaganza, setting the highest record in e-commerce sales on a single day.

Who owns Alibaba, Taobao & Lazada

Alibaba is China’s largest e-commerce company. Alibaba Group was established in 1999 by 18 people led by Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, China. From the beginning, the company’s founders shared a belief that the Internet would enable small enterprises to leverage innovation and technology to grow and compete more effectively in the domestic and global economies. Today the company and its related companies operate leading wholesale and retail online marketplaces as well as businesses in cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, innovation initiatives and others.

Taobao was founded by Alibaba Group in 2003 and Lazada was founded by Rocket Internet in 2012 and subsequently acquired by Alibaba in 2016.

Taobao.com (known as 淘宝网 in Chinese) is a Chinese online shopping website. It is the world’s biggest e-commerce website, as well as the eight most visited website in the world according to Alexa. Whereas, Lazada.com is the largest e-commerce operator in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.

(Picture: Alibaba Group co-founder and Executive Chairman Jack Ma)

Everything you want to know about Jack Ma

Jack Ma Yun (also known as 马云 in Chinese) was born on 15 Oct 1964 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. He began studying English at a young age by talking to English-speakers at Hangzhou international hotel. He would ride over 112 km on his bicycle to give tourists tours of the area and practice his English for 9 years. In August 2018, he became one of China’s richest men with a net worth of US$38.6 billion, as well as one of the wealthiest people in the world. Jack Ma is seen as a global ambassador for Chinese business and as such is frequently listed as one of the world’s most powerful people by Forbes. In 2017, he was ranked second in the annual “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” list by Fortune.

In September 2018, Ma resigned from the position of the CEO of Alibaba Group and reportedly decided to focus on education work.

Education background of Jack Ma

Jack Ma was once struggled attending college. The Chinese entrance exams are held only once a year and he took 4 years to pass. he attended Hangzhou Normal University and graduated in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. While at school, he was head of the student council. After graduation, he became a lecturer in English and International Trade at Hangzhou Dianzi University. He later enrolled at the Beijing-based Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business and graduated in 2006.

E-commerce as the engine of the new economy

In today’s modern world, the evolution of information and communication technologies have lead to a new virtual economy known as electronic commerce (e-commerce). E-commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions.

In old days, running a business usually involved high cost from employment, office or warehouse rental, and various operating costs. Whereas in E-commerce, employment can be very small and often not required to operate an office or retail shop, resulted in nearly zero transaction costs from the operation, these low costs will encourage the entry of new businesses and thus increase competition and pressure to pass lower costs on to consumers as lower prices.

In addition, consumers will be able to search among thousands of merchants for the lowest prices, thereby increasing the downward pressure on prices and leading to a shift in market power from producer to consumer.

Overall, electronic commerce can significantly improve the efficiency of economies, enhance competitiveness, improve the allocation of resources, and increase long-term economic growth.

E-commerce creates technologies and skills

Given the current scale of e-commerce with respect to other factors that may contribute to overall market turbulence (e.g. technology, logistic, trade, policies). The logistics industry is facing the biggest challenges due to the rapid growth of the e-commerce economy. Many technologies have been introduced to smoothing the backbone operation, such as robotics operated warehouse and automated shipping facilities. All these required combinations of mechatronic and Information technology (IT) specialists.

The next big wave is the development of data science and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which has helped Alibaba to increase its scale of operation more efficiently and has resulted in cost-effective outcomes, data science experts and AI programmers work together to use multiple sets of data gathered from the internet to predict what is the next item a consumer is going to purchase and prepare the required stocks in advance. To some extent, an item could be shipped out in advance and reach the destination right after the buyer paid for the item online.

Lastly, is the opportunists or businessmen who would take advantage in this new economy and make good money out of it. When individuals make revenue online, they are required to pay tax and hire an accountant to manage their finances. “Every industry needs Accountants. If student worries about getting a employment in the job market, get a degree in accounting,” said by education consultant from Excel Education.

What can you study in university to prepare yourself from this trending economy

From the article above, we can see that the logistics industry requiring professionals from multiple disciplines such as Bachelor of Mechatronic Engineering, Bachelor of Supply Chain Management and Bachelor of Information Technologies.

From the data science and AI technologies perspective, we can see that this new economy is requiring more disciplines from Bachelor of Information Technologies and Bachelor of Data Science technologies.

Nevertheless, commerce degree is equally important such as Bachelor of business with specialisation/(s) in Accounting, Finance and Marketing.

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