Alibaba’s global business buildout is notable on several points. First, it continues an ‘asset lite’ alliance partnership model, a model used successfully by major logistics and eCommerce companies worldwide as opposed to a ‘build it’ or ‘buy it’ approach, models considered unwieldy, time consuming, and expensive.
In this case Alibaba brings its eCommerce platform expertise to a ready-made logistics partner, NZ Post. The model is replicable worldwide, can be applied on a country by country basis to target high profile eCommerce markets such as India, Brazil, France, Italy, and Spain, as well as key developing eCommerce marketplaces such as Nigeria.
It also offers a key selling point to the national postal operators (“NPOs”) who today may be considering an alliance Amazon as its last mile delivery partner, while also realizing that downstream they may someday be competing with Amazon in their home markets, as the US Postal Service potentially faces tomorrow.