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Beckham will become a brand ambassador as AliExpress goes global

Posted on by darion

Alibaba is racing to catch up with Temu, an online marketplace run by rival PDD Holdings that sells cheap goods made in China to people around the world.

To boost its e-commerce site AliExpress, the Chinese tech giant has hired former England captain David Beckham as a brand ambassador.

Alibaba, which until recently was a small cross-border player, is now investing aggressively to boost global sales amid flagging domestic e-commerce growth. Its international division, which includes AliExpress, is its fastest-growing unit, with revenues up 45% year-on-year in the January-March quarter.

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Earlier this year, AliExpress also became a sponsor of the event UEFA Euro 2024 tournamentwhich will launch in June and will invest millions of dollars in discounts, offers and engagement to attract online consumers.

The advertising campaign featuring Beckham will run in conjunction with the UEFA tournament and encourage consumers to “earn more points with AliExpress,” the e-commerce platform said in a statement on Monday.

This follows Temu’s success with PDD Holdings in airing multiple ads during the Super Bowl this year encouraging American consumers to “shop like a billionaire.”

According to mobile analytics company Apptopia, downloads of the Temu app were up 34% on Super Bowl Sunday compared to the previous day.

“Soccer fans (in Europe and) Latin America are a similar demographic to American soccer fans in North America. “There will generally be a lot of price-sensitive and inflation-affected consumers among them,” said Humphrey Ho, U.S. managing director partner at digital advertising agency Hylink Digital, of the decision by Temu, and now AliExpress, to focus on soccer fans.

Ago ‘earned $18 billion in 2023’

While Alibaba has long viewed the overseas market as a potential money maker, with founder Jack Ma saying in 2017 that Alibaba aimed to serve 2 billion consumers worldwide by 2036, it needs to catch up in many markets ceded to rival Temu.

“Historically, execution has been an issue for Alibaba’s international ambitions,” said Jianggan Li, founder and CEO of Momentum Works, a venture and analytics firm.

“Alibaba spent years debating whether it would be too hard or too difficult to compete with Amazon (in the U.S.), and Temu just went ahead and did it.”

Temu, which sells $5 earbuds and $10 dresses among other items in more than 60 global markets, has grown in popularity since its launch in 2022, and Chinese investment management firm CICC estimates Temu will earn $18 billion in 2023 year.

PDD does not separately break out Temu’s revenues and does not comment on the accuracy of third-party sales estimates.

To better compete with rivals, Alibaba is currently leveraging its competitive advantage by offering select products with five-day delivery windows in 11 markets, supported by investments in global logistics.

The purchase of the Cainiao logistics company in March will likely strengthen AliExpress’s logistics advantage over rivals.

AliExpress is present in over 100 markets.

Alibaba has the will and money to pump growth into AliExpress, but most importantly, the competitive landscape is forcing the issue, changing the dynamics of cross-border e-commerce from China, Li said.

“AliExpress needs to find a way to compete with and differentiate itself from Temu” to gain market share, Li said.

– I mean, there’s no other way.

  • Reuters with additional editing by Jim Pollard

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Jim Pollard

Jim Pollard is an Australian journalist living in Thailand since 1999. He worked for News Ltd newspapers in Sydney, Perth, London and Melbourne before traveling around South East Asia in the late 1990s. He was a senior editor at The Nation for over 17 years.