The "Community Commerce" takes root during Taobao's annual shopping extravaganza this year. The "Community Commerce" is regarded as the secondary transaction value for video bloggers and news feeds.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited, the operator of Taobao, regards stores/businesses that are much smaller and independent than larger corporations as the best fit to foster personal ties among online shoppers. This will push Alibaba toward its unmet goal with regards to social media and entertainment.
During the Double-12 shopping event, more than 5,000 live streams started to broadcast daily on Taobao. This attracted more than 10 million viewers of different topics, ranging from cooking tips to fashion and others.
Around 40 percent of the viewers of the live stream broadcast ended up checking out the online shops that are being promoted.
Daniel Zhang, CEO of Taobao, said: "These are all part of Alibaba's drive to build a consolidated online ecosystem encapsulating e-commerce, mobile media and digital entertainment."
He added: "Through user-generated content, we want people to see Taobao more as the latest reflection of the mainstream lifestyle of the younger generation."
In order to extend this, Taobao also created a website forum wherein users can post questions, which can be answered by anyone on the Taobao user community. It is reported that there are more than 5 million users that asked questions and about 10 million gave their feedback on the Double-12 shopping event last Dec. 12.
Chen Lei, the director who manages the live streaming for Taobao's site, said: "Taobao is geared toward professionally generated content. In the future, Taobao will continue to lead merchants, highly engaged users and live broadcast professionals to create a consumption-oriented live broadcasting platform."
Gil Luria, an analyst from Wedbush Securities, said: "The level of engagement Alibaba is able to create is beyond what we consider with search companies and social media companies. They're investing a lot in making their tools have social engagement like Facebook."