E-commerce Research Proposal: A Case Study of Alibaba.com

This research proposal presents a case study on Alibaba.com, investigating the impact of technology and the internet on the business world. It explores the rise of e-commerce, its operational dynamics, and its potential to surpass traditional brick-and-mortar stores. The study employs a case study design, focusing on Alibaba.com, and utilizes a stratified random sampling method to gather data from consumers, business managers, and technology experts through questionnaires and interviews. The findings highlight the growing popularity of online business, while also acknowledging the continued preference for physical stores. The research concludes that online purchasing is likely to continue growing, emphasizing the need for online businesses to improve technology and marketing strategies. The literature review covers the history of e-commerce, its website functionalities, and the guiding theory of flow. The methodology section outlines the research design, target population, data collection methods (questionnaires, observation, and interviews), and sampling procedures. The report aims to provide insights for business people, aspiring entrepreneurs, and consumers, offering an understanding of the e-commerce landscape and its future implications.

E-COMMERCE RESEARCH PROPOSAL A CASE STUDY OF ALIBABA.COM
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TABLE OF CONTENT
Content page
Cover page………………………………………………………………………………………...1
Table of content……………………………………………………………………………….…..2
Executive summary……………………………………………………………………………….3
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..4
Literature review…………………………………………………………………………………..6
Overview of the study methodology………………………………………………………………9
Data collection methods………………………………………………………………………….10
Sampling procedure…………………………………………………………………………...…11
Results and discussion…………………………………………………………………………...12
Limitations……………………………………………………………………………………….14
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….15
Recommendation………………………………………………………………………………...16
References………………………………………………………………………………………..17
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This study was carried out in order to establish the future of the business world that is the
progress of online business as a result of the development and improvement of technology which
has affected many areas including the business sector. Due to technology, there was introduction
of e-commerce where people get to sell and buy goods online and to be precise with the support
of internet which has provided the platform for such activities to take place. The research took a
case study design where a single entity that is Alibaba.com was taken into consideration to come
up with the findings and the conclusion. Population sample was chosen using stratified random
sampling whereby the population was first divided into groups such as the consumers, business
managers, and technology experts among others. Questionnaires and live interviews were the
major tools and methods used to collect data. Results indicated that as much as online business
has become popular among people, it still serves as the secondary option when one wants to
purchase goods. Majority still buy from real stores but the number of people buying from online
shops is continuously increasing. It was concluded that if the trend goes on as it is at now, there
are chances that online purchase of goods is going to beat the real stores shops, but until then,
online sellers have to keep on improving the technology to attract more clients and come up with
stronger and better marketing strategies.
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Introduction
Over the past few years, the technology has been improved in that, living in the world in these
current years seem much easier than the past. Technology has brought about the internet which
has many changes created in the business sector as well as the communication sector whereby
the world has been made appear like a global village (Keikha & Sadeq, 2015). Due to the
presence of the internet, people use it not only for fun and communication but also to make
money. Businesses are being run through the internet. The emergence of e-commerce is as a
result of technology improvement which gave birth to this common platform all over the world
which is the internet (진진진 & Jaewook Lim, 2012) .The likes of alibaba.com carry out its
activities purely through online means right from procurement process, marketing, orders and
supply of goods. This company is based in china, was founded in the year 1999 by Yun ma. It is
currently the leading online business in booth china and among the best e-commerce in the
world. From the look of things, online business is getting much popularity and preference
compared to the manual business ("connecting social media to ecommerce using microblogging
and artficial neural network", 2017). For online business, goods are ordered and paid for online
and then the concerned companies make the effort of delivering them to the desired destination.
Reliable resources show some supermarkets and retail shops that were once popular now lack
customers and some of them have even been closed down while online businesses are flourishing
day in day out. Take an example of alibaba.com; no one ever expected it to be where it is at the
moment. Could the reason be that consumers now prefer online purchase of goods rather than
physically going to the shops to fetch goods? Therefore, this research seeks to find out how the
internet as part of the technology has affected business in the world and how the world is
adapting the change in technology to shift their ways of doing things ("eCommerce", 2013)the
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research questions were:
are there any chances that the online business is one day going overtake real store businesses?
And to what extent has the internet affected business activities in the current generation? this
study’s purposes were : to find out the effects of the technology on business today, to create an
understanding of online business and its operations , to predict the future of business in the world
and to find out the relationship between technology and business.
This study shall be significant to business people and those who are aspiring to start businesses.
Through this study, they will be able to know the kind of businesses to run whether to start
online or real stores businesses. Also, the consumers shall be able to learn a lot from this study
and get an insight understanding of what online business means, how it operates and its and
vantages and disadvantages over real stores businesses (Liang & Turban, 2011).
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Literature review
The main purpose of the literature review is to provide information and an insight of the research
topic.it puts all tools together, integrates and summarizes ideas from scholars and various sources
of information. There has been a continuous growth in the technology , it has affected so many
fields and the business sector has not been left out ("eCommerce", 2013). Due to technology,
businesses have been carried out online and it seems to be gaining popularity over time and
therefore, there is need to carry out a research that seeks to find out the possible future of the
business sector given that online businesses now exist. Many researches have been done on
business as a whole but few have been done on the e-commerce sector, therefore, this study is
relevant to provide an insight (Ahmad, Rahman & Khan, 2016). However, this study faced
limitations in that respondents did not provide full information required from them as well as
companies that run online businesses could not reveal all details due to reasons best known to
them yet they were important for the study.
Brief history of e-commerce
online business is a kind of business that is run through online means and specifically the
internet. It is also known an e-commerce which means commerce that is carried out
electronically (Ceruti, Mazzucchelli & Di Gregorio, 2016). Goods and services are sold and
bought electronically. It was introduced to the world approximately forty years ago, by then it
was less safe and convenient as it is as at now. From there it has been improved step by step by
innovators and technological engineers. To enable online business, electronic data interchange
(edit) was developed; it replaced the traditional faxing and mailing documents with a digital
transfer of data from one document to another. Business partners were able to transfer invoice
and other business data amongst each other through this means. By the year 1999, more than
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nine million minitel terminals had been distributed which connected about twenty five million
users in the interconnected network of machines. History of the e-commerce can be traced
through these minor improvements up to date (Ahmad, Rahman & Khan, 2016)
The online business website works by following a series of website codes, database and third
party applications and payment process (Kossecki, 2005). Once one wants to run a business
online, a website is developed to suit the products to sell. The website is also set to accept credit
cards and other terms of payment according to the business owner, the website will display the
goods available (King, Sen, D’Aubeterre & Sethi, 2010). A customer can place orders by logging
in to such websites, provide personal information, means of payment and place an order. The
business personnel will then take the orders and organize for good deliveries to the
customer .therefore, a buyer can just sit at the comfort of his own home and order for goods
without having to move , all the person requires is a gadget and internet connection . (Deng &
Zhang, 2014) Similarly, the company that is alibaba places orders through the internet for
potential vendors to supply goods and services. Selection, payment, orders and purchases are all
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done through the internet (Tan & Ludwig, 2016)
(Datta, 2010)
The theory guiding this study is the theory of flow .according to Mihally Csikszentmihalyl, the
best moments in a human being’s life is not when relaxing but it is when the person’s mind or
body is stretched to the maximum limits possible voluntarily with the purpose of accomplishing
a set goal. At that moment, the person feels fulfilled and at control of his or her actions. The urge
to take control and accomplish things pushes one to explore more. Therefore, it explains the
feeling human beings have when they perceive a sense of interaction with the technology and
taking steps further to come up with new things which makes them feel in control (Datta, 2010)
Therefore, the development websites and invention of online business came up as a result of
wanting to find fulfillment in the interaction with technology and stretching the mind to come up
with new things.
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overview of the study methodology
in this part of research methodology, the research design adopted in the study is described, target
population, instruments used to collect data and the procedure followed to obtain data
("International Journal of Social Research Methodology: Theory & Practice", 2012)
Research design used in this study was the case study design. This is whereby an individual or
single company is used to tap information. The single entity is studied in-depth and this design
makes a very good use of the qualitative analysis. In this case, alibaba.com was used as the case
study to carry out this research. Through the research methodology, research questions are
answered and the objectives of the study are met through the findings in this chapter (Groh,
2016).
The target population is the group of people that the researcher is interested in when carrying out
a study. Since the whole population cannot be studied at once, a sample population is taken to
cut across the whole population and the findings from this sample can be generalized at the end
of the study. In this case, the sample population consisted of people of 5 business managers, 10
technology experts, 7 auditor and 20 consumers. The total number of correspondents was forty
two (Etikan, 2017)
Sample population Sample size
Business managers 5
Technology experts 10
Auditors 7
Consumers 20
Total 42
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Data collection methods
These are the choices of ways to collect information by the researcher, the choices made depend
on the nature of the study being carried out. The methods used to carry out this research were the
use of questionnaires, observation and interviews. Questionnaires are forms that have questions
which have to be completed by the correspondents and returned (Vilalta, 2012).These forms
were given to literate people who wanted to have a form of privacy yet their direct feedback was
required. Observation was used to analyze the number of people who use online means to
acquire goods and services. Annual data from reliable sources were observed over the past few
years to see the trend of online business popularity. Interviews were used on correspondents who
were ready to talk openly and wanted explanations on the kind of questions given to them. All
these three methods suited the study as they all brought out suitable and expected results (Zheng,
2012). The validity of the content was determined using expert knowledge where the researcher
got advice from and discussed the questionnaire with the supervisor. The researcher further made
sure that the questions were well structured with ambiguity whereby one question had the
possibility of getting more than one direction of answers. The language used was simple and
with a lot of respect to the correspondent, offensive terms were out of frame. Interviews were
also carried out with a lot of professionalism. The answers given out by the corresponded all
answered the questions clearly which means they all had an understanding on the questions given
to them. There was ethical consideration before, during and after the process.
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Sampling procedures
E-commerce is something that affects so many people from all parts of the world which makes it
difficult to study all of them; the researcher took a sample population to represent all of them.
The process of choosing part of the large population to use as attest hypothesis is called the
sampling procedure. The participants of the research were selected using stratified random
sampling where the population was first divided into groups considering the ages, occupation
and living standard. All these were put into consideration so as to get the best and generalizable
results after interviewing, giving out questionnaires and observation making. The chosen people
to be used as a sample population were those deemed to provide the best answers and
information on the topic of research. The sex of the participants was also put into consideration
to know if e-commerce was common among a certain gender or if it carried the same weight.
After considering all factors, the total number was forty two. Below is a table that shows the
number of samples taken from each category of respondents?
female male 16-24 24-15 54-74
Business
managers
3 2 0 2 3
Technology
experts
5 5 2 5 3
Auditors 4 3 1 3 3
consumers 10 10 7 7 6
(Lee, 2017).
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Results and discussion
Information found from the three methods of collection that is interviews, questionnaires and
observation gave appositive response towards the research. Out of the forty two correspondents,
twenty five people were aware of online business and had ever used it to purchase goods and
services, while the rest had just heard of it but never used to buy commodities, out of them, only
two were not willing to try it as they gave different reasons such as luck of trust and finding it
easy to purchase goods physically where they can inspect by themselves before purchasing. Not
all of the e-commerce users got into it at the same time, having learnt from social media, friends
and newspapers, they tried for the first time and they got satisfactory services (King, Schilhavy,
Chowa & Chin, 2016).
Statistics showed that 1.66 billion people in the world purchase commodities online. According
to report from the US business report, the online business grew up to fifteen percent in the year
2016 whereby out of the total retail sales made, eight percent were online. From the data
collected through the international communications agency, it shows that three billion people
have access and make use of the internet in the world. Majority of these people who purchase
goods online are working class, literate and a good living standard. The reason as to why many
people do not use it is because sometimes, there are network failures and miscommunication lead
to delivery of the wrong goods which takes a process to exchange them; some of the sellers do
not take back goods already delivered.
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(Baumöl, 2013).
The illustration above shows the internet use and its progress over the past ten years. The three
lines represent an age bracket where the light blue represents people between the ages of 16-24
years, the orange line represents the age between 25-54 year and the dark blue one is a
representative of 55-74 years (Baumöl, 2013). Amongst all these groups, people who make use
of internet the most are people between the ages of 25-54 which clearly explains why the use of
ecommerce is common among the working class. The group that follows in the ranking is that of
the age of 16-24 year of which comprise students as a majority. the least people who use internet
are those over fifty four year, mostly, people start to retire ta these age and most of the people
who are not familiar with the internet are these people .From the year 2007, the use of internet
has been continuously rising which can predict the future in that internet use is going to gain
popularity more and more. Given 100 years to come, online business will have overtaken the real
stores kind of business due to improvement in technology and change of lifestyle (García-
Murillo, 2004).
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Limitations
the challenge during the study was lack of sufficient evidence and information. During the
collection of data, some respondents chose to leave the questions blank and yet they had
purposed and knew they were supposed to fill them. This made it difficult to know if they left it
due to lack of knowledge over e-commerce or ignorance. it took a lot of time to explain to some
of the respondents what was required of the, some of the interviewees ended up giving different
answers from the expected answers following the questions posed to them. Some of e-commerce
businesses do not upload their information on the internet and when asked about them, they are
not willing to reveal, it could be that they think the research shall be used against them. Infect
some of them prefer giving out wrong information hence the researcher had to go an extra mile
to prove the information given out. E-commerce covers the whole world of which different parts
have different literacy level, lifestyle and financial level. Therefore, generalizing the information
and results from the correspondents may not apply to all parts of the world due to the mentioned
differences among different continents. The sample size that was available for the study was
rather too small to use it to carry out a research that covers the whole world, reaching people
from different continents to give information about the entire continent and the specific countries
in different parts of the world was difficult and that is why the researcher used observations as
one of the methods to obtain data. Sometimes, observation cannot be as accurate as live
interviews and handing over questionnaires to the specific respondent. The researcher just made
observations on the available news and information from other sources, analyzed the data and
came up with conclusions. It should be noted that this could limit the findings since the results
can be opinions of the researcher and not the actual situation.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, e-commerce companies depend on the improvement of technology from time to
time and from the observations made and data collection for the past years, the use of internet
has been increasing and continues to increase and people migrated from the analogue to the
digital world. The sampling of the research favored all groups of people concerned with online
purchasing which put age, gender, occupation and other minor factors into consideration which
means that the results from these people covered a larger field and reflected the whole
population. However, it may be difficult to overtake real stores due to the long time perception
that has been built in customers’ minds that makes it difficult to migrate fully to online
purchasing of goods. However, the popularity of online purchasing shall be determined by
improvement in technology and influence of people. As much as there are many internet users,
very few of them use internet to make purchases (garcia mendoza & marasinghe, 2015).
Recommendations
The researcher recommended other researchers to carry out further studies on other uses of
internet (Kossecki, 2004). This is because during the study, it was realized that majority of
people use internet but not for online purchasing of goods. Other researchers were also
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recommended to carry out studies on individual countries to get better accurate and much
localized results. Out of the large percentage of middle aged people who made maximum use of
the internet compared to others, the researcher found out that a very minimal number of this
majority purchase goods online hence there is need to find out more about their activities on the
internet (Ashraf, Hussain & Hussain, 2013). Online business owners are recommended to
educate more people on how to purchase goods online because findings showed that there are
people who are interested yet they do not know how to go about it. They are also supposed to lay
down more and better marketing strategies so as to be able to get more customers e they have as
at now. Innovators and technology experts have to develop online purchasing and provide feature
that are easier to use and maintain the websites to avoid failures which may cause
inconveniences for the consumers and online business sellers (Rallis & Lawrence, 2017).
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