Skilled Migrant Professionals December 2015 | Page 21

Business
Taobao has 500 million registered users, 60 million daily visitors and a
transaction flow of 48 thousand products per minute. In 2012, Taobao
generated $160 billion in sales and is fast becoming a hub for international brands, such as Amazon, Nike and Sony, as well as Australian brands such as Blackmores. It also includes numerous new Chinese
brands that are highly creatively designed. For this reason, the U.S. took
Taobao off its famous, or perhaps infamous, list of intellectual property
infringements in 2012.
There are various reasons accounting for eBay’s failure in the Chinese market. As a 2005 Morgan Stanley study revealed, Taobao interfaces and supporting functions, such as Aliwangwang, are far more user-friendly, customer-centric, community-experience driven and graphic
than eBay’s. In 2007, eBay executives planned to ‘evolve the user experience to be more competitive’, however, the eBay interfaces and functions remain nowhere close to Taobao’s. As one of the earliest users of
Taobao, I can also speak from personal experience that eBay is too lowend in terms of user experience.

3. Social Media

WeChat is a Chinese mobile app with 500 million monthly active users
accumulated since 2011. In an article published by the Harvard Business
Review, managing partner of Towson Capital and a Peking University
professor of management, Jeffrey Towson, identified aggressive innovation with a global vision as an ethos of WeChat.
“WeChat is a little like what you would get if you combined AOL,
Facebook, Skype, Yahoo, Gmail, Norton, and Twitter — under one
roof,” said Professor Towson.
WeChat combines both public and private comments systems. It is a

500 million

monthly active users

$160 billion
generated 2012
in sales

messenger, a phone, a public social media, a private network, an online
shopping platform, an online game machine, and a banking tool. You
can use it to play mobile games, hail taxis, shop online and make payments, usually by one or two screen touches. In addition, it enables you
to open online stores and create public websites, through which you can
publish and distribute information, advertise, or sell to all subscribers. In
comparison, Facebook, WhatsApp and LinkedIn are all too amateurish.
Australia is in a unique position to offer minerals, resources and now
food and agricultural goods to China, however, minerals and resources
are declining. Agricultural goods have a very strong demand in China,
but the industrial expertise needed in Australia for dealing with China is
close to zero. I was recently invited by two (one private and one public)
Australian agricultural sectors to identity how to improve the situation.
As shown in this article, China is re-emerging as a global innovation
leader and with this, Australia has even less experience. Learning about
China, including its people, customs, and ways of conducting business,
is the most essential pathway to improvement.

December 2015 | www.smpmagazine.com.au

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