Who is winning at Ecommerce– Amazon or Alibaba?

Last Updated on: November 20, 2017

Ecommerce has transformed the way companies do business and how people shop for goods and services. Amazon in the U.S. and Alibaba in China are the shining stars in global ecommerce.

Amazon was founded as Cadabra in 1994 by and kicked off as an online bookstore in 1995. Jack Ma and 17 other entrepreneurs founded and launched Alibaba as a global wholesale marketplace in 1999.

Both ecommerce giants dominate their respective markets and are expanding into new areas. But who is winning the ecommerce race – Amazon or Alibaba?

Over the years, Amazon expanded its services beyond selling books and publishing services to merchandise such as apparel, consumer electronics, industrial and scientific products, personal care items, and cloud computing services.

Alibaba’s three main sites, Taobao, Tmall, and Alibaba.com, have millions of users and host millions of merchants and businesses.

An infographic by Ecommerce-Platforms tracks the growth of these ecommerce giants with data and statistics related to market share, employee base, major shareholders, operating countries, traffic, and profits. Let’s take a look at the numbers to see where they stand.

Amazon’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) in the U.S. in 2016 was $147.0 billion (a 31.3% increase from 2015), while Alibaba’s GMV was $547billion (a 22% increase from 2015). The ecommerce giants stood neck-to-neck in terms of total retail sales in their respective markets in 2016- the value of Amazon’s total retail sales in the U.S. in 2016 was $4846 billion, while Alibaba’s total retail sales value in the Chinese market was $4890.01 billion. Also, in 2016, Amazon’s profits stood at $47,722,000 and Alibaba’s at $10,327,000.

Amazon is taking away all the new customers shopping online in the US. Though Alibaba already accounts for more than 80% of all online purchases in China, there is still room for growth as internet penetration is just at 53% in the country.

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Natasha Mayer

Natasha is a freelance technical writer based at Ohio. She is a renowned tech blogger, review writer and apt digital marketer. When not at her workstation, she could be found wondering the sea beaches finding snarls.