Jack Ma is the founder and CEO of Alibaba, and Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com Inc. In the book of Porter Erisman, Alibaba is a Chinese company changing the face of global business. International public relations for Alibaba was handled in 2006 when Ma gave a speech at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco and had a breakthrough appearance before the prestigious Internet conference for the Chinese company.

Nowadays, Ma’s company, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Has a stock market value that exceeds that of Amazon. Few people don’t know the story behind this. Previously, Ma was an English teacher with no computer training; he developed Alibaba from its founding in his apartment in a Chinese city in 1999 to pull off the world’s largest IPO in September 2014. Alibaba raised $25 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.

Between 2000 and 2008, Alibaba was a pipsqueak daring to challenge giant eBay Inc., which influenced the inexperienced e-commerce world in China when Alibaba was getting started.

After producing a documentary on Alibaba called Crocodile in Yangtze, Erisman wrote a book. The main aim is to share the offerings with entrepreneurs worldwide. There are plenty of lessons regarding offerings.

The most potent lessons emerged from the battle between Alibaba and eBay. When Alibaba created its first consumer-facing shopping portal, Taobao 2003, it claimed it for its China site, accounting for 955 online retail sales in China.

A significant concession is that a big webmaster has to know his customers and orient his service according to their needs. While the listing fee is charged and takes a commission on sales by eBay. Ma and his Alibaba colleagues decided to move sellers by promising free service for three years. They helped to attract many small retailers on eBay to try out Taobao.

Since Taobao does not charge fees, there is nothing to fear of loss from buyers’ and sellers’ communication. In eBay’s case, communications lead to sellers paying eBay fees. For example, a small shop owner can tell a customer that the price of an item is 200 yuan on eBay, but if a customer goes into his shop, he will sell it for 160 yuan because he doesn’t have to pay eBay fees.

Taobao is most concerned about this, and its team recognized that Chinese shoppers want to know the customers. Among Chinese Internet users, live chat was taking off at that time. Taobao created a chat function called Wang Wang, providing the facility for exchanges between buyers and sellers. Enhanced selection on Taobao helped to influence millions of Chinese online shoppers to Taobao.

eBay made a mistake in standardizing its global sites on a single technology platform based in Silicon Valley. The difference in time between China and California means that hosts have little opportunity each day in China to consult with decision-makers in the home office. In addition, eBay China hostsa’s firewall, whic,h is a collection of web servers.

As Taobao grew, the price was cut, and eBay retained sellers, causing concern among investors in the publicly traded companies. In January 2006, seller fees were eliminated by eBay in China. At that time, Alibaba understood the environment and moved for development.