Alibaba Group's Community Engagement: A Detailed Report on Practices

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Alibaba Group's community engagement practices. It begins with an introduction to community engagement and then delves into Alibaba's specific strategies, including their community news feed, sustainability initiatives, job creation, and rural development programs in China. The report explores stakeholder participation, including customers, employees, investors, vendors, and the government, and examines the training and development required to address socio-cultural issues. It highlights Alibaba's forward-looking approach to multiculturalism and emphasizes the importance of sustainable business relationships. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and offers recommendations for innovation and technology adoption to enhance Alibaba's community engagement efforts, emphasizing the company's customer-centric approach and its focus on global market expansion. The report references various academic sources to support its analysis.

Community Engagement

Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.............................................................................................................................................3
Alibaba practices in community engagement....................................................................................3
Stakeholder participation...................................................................................................................5
Training and development required for dealing with socio-culture issues with society.....................6
Forwards looking approach of Alibaba on multiculturalism..............................................................7
Sustainable business relationship.......................................................................................................7
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................8
Recommendations.................................................................................................................................8
References.............................................................................................................................................9

Introduction
Community engagement is identified as the concept of collaborating with and through
groups of individuals linked by geographic similarity common interests, or similar
circumstances to resolve issues affecting those people's well-being. As a result, community
engagement is a systematic mechanism aimed at identifying and addressing problems that
impact the well-being of defined groups of individuals, whether they are linked by
geography, special interest, or affiliation (Anwar, 2017). The association of the terms
community and engagement broadens the range, moving the emphasis from the individual to
the collective, with consequences for equality to ensure that the diversity that occurs within
any community is taken into account. The present report will highlight operational activities
of “Alibaba Group” which is a Chinese multinational technology company. The respective
company was founded by Jack Ma and is headquartered in Yuhang District, George Town,
Cayman Islands. Respective company has captured almost every product as well as services
that includes, E-commerce, Entertainment, retail TV shows and many more. An attempt is
being made in this report to highlight Jack Ma role in community engagement to ensure
better operations of company’s activities and will focus on various challenges or issues that is
faced by the company at the time of operational activities (Freeman and et. al., 2020).
Main Body
Alibaba practices in community engagement
Alibaba community news feed

As per announcement made by Alibaba Cloud, 2019, that company is making a big
step towards Alibaba Cloud Community’s vision for supporting a UGC-oriented process and
model. This community network feature provides more connectivity, allowing company to
increase community participation and user interaction within the online community while
also adding more external participants to our network. Firm’s primary strategy for increasing
participation is to include non-monetary incentives to group contributors and to grade
individuals based on their contributions. In addition, based on the most common customer
reviews and specific problems, the organisation has included product changes. This will
engage company’s operational work and feedbacks collected from various customers after
using firm’s product or services. This will enable managers of the firm to regulate effective
working of the firm and make production department of business firm responsive towards
feedbacks collected from various customers of the company. It will not only increase
goodwill of business firm but will also contribute towards increasing brand loyalty of
respective products and services offered by company in its given marketplace (Alibaba Cloud
Community 2.0 Launch — One Community for All, 2019).
Aiming sustainability
Daniel Zhang who is also the current CEO of the company governs respective
activities of the firm by adopting sustainable approaches. Various operational tasks of
business firm is regulated based upon aiming at optimum use of resources and dedicate saved
resources for betterment of society (Han and et. al., 2019). The firm is recognised as the most
charitable business model that supports social participation and engagement with society at
the most priority in its respective given marketplace of operations.
Job opportunities
The diversity of company's ecosystem, as well as the variety of service providers
needed within it, creates significant job opportunities. Organisation's ecosystem has provided
new opportunities for service providers in logistics, marketing, consulting, operations
outsourcing, training, and other online and mobile commerce professions, in addition to
creating direct business opportunities for merchants (Hu and Zheng, 2020).
Rural development in China
Company have generated opportunities for rural citizens in China to develop and
expand by assisting them in selling agricultural produce to urban consumers and supplying

them with greater access to a wider range of high-quality products and services through
shopping online as they grow into rural areas.
Poverty relief programs
Company have its contribution towards China’s poverty relief initiatives. Apart from
using firm’s resources, it has also created various platforms and programs in order to reach
the target effectively. Various efforts were made by firm in respect with providing education,
funds for small business and promoted empowerment women in the region (Lee and Chien,
2018).
Stakeholder participation
Any person, group, or party with an interest in an entity and the results of its activities
is referred to as a stakeholder in company. Employees, consumers, shareholders, vendors,
societies, and governments are all examples of stakeholders. Multiple stakeholders with
different priorities, and businesses often have to make trade-offs in order to meet demands of
each of them (Myers, 2017). There are various stakeholder in a company, their contribution
towards community engagement is stated below:
Customers: These are those individuals whose demands and behaviours under certain
situations are being tracked by the company marketers and managers. Concerned department
of workforce conducts deep study on firm’s operational marketplace to extract information
about trends of various consumers present in business market. Company introduced various
programs and platforms such as social media to engage with their customers under several
market conditions. In addition to this, company publishes community post and attractive
company product posters to engage with customers. The process also involves collection of
regular feedbacks and performing quality improvements in production process of the business
firm.
Employees: They are those individual working in respective firm to pursue their
personal objectives along with completion of organisational goals and objectives. Employees
in the company are trained in such a way that they have better communications skills and are
pushed outside of their respective comfort zones to develop better relation with company’s
stakeholders that help company to maintain its better goodwill in its given region of
operations.
Investors: They are individual who have faith in company’s operational work and
sometimes are also admirers of the company. They are the person who invest their savings

towards company’s capital which ultimately raise capital funds of workforce and enable firm
to conducts its operational work effectively. Managers of various firms ensures better
relations between company’s investors and company. This solves issues or challenges related
to shortage of fund resources and enhances productivity of the firm through delivering
products and services at right time to various company’s customers (Qiao and et. al., 2020).
Vendors: They are those individuals who supplied raw materials to company that
helps n production process of the firm. Company engages close relations with their vendors
or suppliers, this helps company to get raw materials at cheaper rates that ultimately enables
firm to deliver products and services of the company at rational prices.
Government: Government is also considered to be one of the stakeholder of a
company. Operational manager of a business firm should consider various regulations and
policies adopted by governing body of the respective region in which firm is operating its
business activities. The business strategies and plans should comply with respective
government policy being adopted by government of the region. Any failure to address
government policies could lead to legal formalities against business working.
Training and development required for dealing with socio-culture issues with society
Socio-cultural diversity refers to elements of society that can affect how people
communicate with people from other cultures. It can also affect how people react to
management demands, organisational requirements, and company policies, or what is known
as the company's culture. In regards to chosen firm i.e. “Alibaba Group”, managers of the
firm with a future aim to achieve success offers various training and development programs
that helps firm to deal with various socio-cultural issues present in the society. Some of the
benefits of providing training and development programs in organisation structure are as
follows:
Professionalism: Proper training and development programs in respective firm
ensures professionalism of working throughout the operational working of company.
Promoting professionalism approach in the business firm ensures delivering up of better
quality of products and services to valuable customers of the business firm.
Clear vision: Training and development programs includes revision of business aims
and objectives. It includes providing proper guidance with promoting innovative approaches
to perform respective job tasks allotted to various individuals working in the workforce.

Performance gaps: Through such programs managers of the firm can fill various
performances gaps and dedicate firm’s working towards attainment of desired goals and
objectives ensuring proper utilisation of resources of the firm and also enables company to
produce operational work avoiding any sort of wastages in the organisational structure.
Forwards looking approach of Alibaba on multiculturalism
As due to outbreak of globalisation which has changes the way of working of various
business enterprise as the manner in which they were working before. By looking at such
change business conditions, Jack Ma, CEO of company don’t want to miss out of this aspect
as well. Therefore, various operational standards and business strategies were being
formulated in organisational structure to focus firm’s working on providing training and
development of various employees towards multiculturalism (Wang and et. al., 2021).
Importance of providing training and development programs to deal with multiculturalism;
 Diverse culture perspective can inspire creativity and promote innovation.
 Company can get local market knowledge.
 Marketers of company get great help in acknowledging about cultural sensitivity and
behaviours of various cultured people.
 Great opportunity to enhance growth of firm in international market.
 Promotes team efforts by avoiding cultural differences ultimately raising strong
groups for achievement of company’s growth objectives.
Sustainable business relationship
Moving to more sustainable business practises requires more than just changing office
working conditions. A variety of more sustainable, alternative approaches can be introduced
by concentrating the sustainability attention on a company's external practices, particularly
with customers. Use them to help your company expand, enhance client relationships, and
protect the environment. In regards to “Alibaba Group”, Jack Ma (Founder) along with
Daniel Zhang (CEO) develops effective sustainable business relations with respective
stakeholders of the workforce. This enhances better productivity of business firm and also
enable managers of firm to develop better quality products and services which are delivered
to company’s valuable customers keeping customer centric approach i.e. setting production
standards in firm as per demands and requirements of respective customer of company.
Managers of firm have adopted social media platforms to develop effective relations
with their customers. As with analysing that social media is the most viable and trending

technique to get in touch with customer’s desire and requirement in various products and
services they consumes.

Conclusion
From the above report, it can be concluded that establishing community engagement
of a company plays an important role to promote better and sustainable approach towards
completion of desired goals and objectives of the firm. The presented report highlighted
various aspects and are in which chosen firm operate with their customer centric approach as
the technique to find their good spot in international markets. Finally, sustainable approaches
and multiculturalism is focused by managers of chosen firm to promote better and efficient
working of the business firm with a view point to achieve better position in future markets
and promote company’s working in various regions across the world.
Recommendations
By critically analysing the above report paper, there are certain recommendations
which are to be drawn out for managers and concentrated towards carrying better potential of
the firm in its respective field of working. These recommendations are as follows;
 Innovation: As it can be drafted from the above report that various attempts were
made by top level management of firm for providing clear instructions to innovate in
respective operational activities of the business firm. However, there are certain
loophole towards such innovation practises, thus, managers of the firm are
recommended to research on such issues and create better path towards
accomplishment of desired objectives of the firm.
 Technology: As evaluated from the above meta-analysis, managers and leaders of
chosen firm have formulated various standards that aims at better position of company
in future in international markets. Therefore, it is to be recommended to respective
firm that, operational management department of the firm should take use of up to
date and trending technologies. This will help workforce to proceed with its important
project and will ensure better productivity while carrying its respective business goals
and objectives.

References
Books and Journals
Anwar, S.T., 2017. Alibaba: Entrepreneurial growth and global expansion in B2B/B2C
markets. Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 15(4), pp.366-389.
Freeman, R.E., Parmar, B.L. and Martin, K., 2020. BUSINESS AND ETHICS (pp. 129-140).
Columbia University Press.
Han, B.R., Sun, T., Chu, L.Y. and Wu, L., 2019. Connecting customers and merchants
offline: Experimental evidence from the commercialization of last-mile stations at
alibaba. Available at SSRN 3452769.
Hu, Q. and Zheng, Y., 2020. Smart city initiatives: A comparative study of American and
Chinese cities. Journal of Urban Affairs, pp.1-22.
Lee, T.R. and Chien, C.Y., 2018. New Internet Marketing Strategy: the Application of the
CCB Model. Case Studies: Insights on Agriculture Innovation 2017 (IAAS Series),
p.163.
Myers, B.L., 2017. Engaging Globalization (Mission in Global Community): The Poor,
Christian Mission, and Our Hyperconnected World. Baker Academic.
Qiao, G., Ryan, C., Zhou, C. and Lockyer, T., 2020. The Entertainization of Business Event:
The Case of Alibaba Computing Conference in Hangzhou. In Entrepreneurship and
the Community (pp. 105-123). Springer, Cham.
Wang, J., Cai, S., Xie, Q. and Chen, L., 2021. The influence of community engagement on
seller opportunistic behaviors in e-commerce platform. Electronic Commerce
Research, pp.1-29.
Online
Alibaba Cloud Community 2.0 Launch — One Community for All, 2019. [Online]. Available
through: <https://alibaba-cloud.medium.com/alibaba-cloud-community-2-0-launch-
one-community-for-all-d27a4d6053a3>