To what extent does air pollution affect people's online shopping behavior? To what extent does air pollution affect people's online shopping behavior, and what proportion of online consumption is new? Why are there 41 of China's "top 100 e-commerce counties" in Zhejiang and only four in Guangdong?

These secrets of e-commerce are hidden in the "big data" of Alibaba's business ecosystem.

"The biggest source of energy for manufacturing in the future is not oil, but data." Alibaba Board Chairman Jack Ma described the importance of "data".

In his view, Alibaba is essentially a data company, the purpose of Taobao is to obtain retail data and manufacturing data; the purpose of ant gold service is to establish a credit system; logistics is not to send packages, but these data together, "the computer will understand you better than you". At the same time, the development of the industry is moving from the IT era to the DT era represented by big data technology.

Inside Alibaba, by e-commerce, Internet finance, e-commerce logistics, cloud computing and big data constitute the Alibaba Internet business ecosystem, but also the Alibaba Research Institute is rooted in the "soil".

Specifically, all the massive data on Alibaba's platform come from millions of dynamic micro-enterprises, individual entrepreneurs, and hundreds of millions of consumers, and Alibaba Research Institute, through the research and analysis of their business activities and consumer behavior, to a certain extent, can reflect the structure and development trend of a place and even the macro-economy.

With the continuous expansion and extension of Alibaba's eco-system, Alibaba's data resources will, to a certain extent, be able to effectively supplement the lagging effect of the traditional economic indicators in measuring the warmth and coldness of the economy, and help the government to more comprehensively, timely and accurately grasp the operation of the micro-economy.

From IT to DT

Different from the technology research-oriented research institutes of some enterprises, Song Fei, vice president of the Ali Research Institute, told the First Financial Daily reporter that the Ali Research Institute is located in a research-oriented researchers and think tanks, and that its main research directions include future research (e.g., the information economy), research on model innovation at the micro level (e.g., the C2B model, the cloud system organization model), and industrial research at the meso level (e.g., the C2B model, the cloud system organization model). ), meso-level research on the Internetization of industries (e.g., e-commerce logistics, Internet finance, rural e-commerce, etc.), macro-level research on the interaction between the new economy and the traditional economy (e.g., the Internet and employment, consumption, import and export, etc.), and Internet governance (e.g., net regulation, e-commerce legislation).

Specifically in the field of data, it is to develop a number of data products and services based on Alibaba's Internet business ecosystem, starting from enterprise data, employment data, consumption data, commodity data and regional data, etc., through big data mining and modeling.

For example, the statistical standards for Internet economic data, which buttress Internet data with macroeconomic statistical standards, include standards for China's city classification; classification standards for online consumption structure; and classification standards for online commodities and services.

And statistical databases of economic information by economic topics include a statistical database of commodity information; a statistical database of consumption information of online shopping users; a statistical database of small businesses and employment; and a statistical database of regional economy.

There is also the Alibaba Internet Economy Index, a barometer reflecting the development of the e-commerce economy. These include the Alibaba Consumer Confidence Index (aCCI), which reflects the consumption intentions of Internet users, the Alibaba Online Price Index (aSPI), which reflects the price trends of online shopping commodities, and the Alibaba Online Core Price Index (aSPI-core), which is a fixed-basket index, the Alibaba Small Business Activity Index (aBAI), which reflects the business status of online stores, and the Alibaba E-Commerce Development Index (aEDI), which reflects the level of regional e-commerce development, and so on. index aEDI, reflecting the level of regional e-commerce development, and so on. Among them, the existing aSPI is reported to the National Bureau of Statistics on a monthly basis.

And for local government decision-making and analysis of data products "Ali economic cloud map", will be launched in stages, local economic overview, panoramic analysis, monitoring and early warning, as well as knowledge services and other functions. Song Fei told reporters that its data can cover all provinces, cities, districts and counties at all levels of administrative units, local government users after authorization, you can see through the Alibaba economic cloud map of local e-commerce transactions on the Alibaba platform in the scale of e-commerce transactions, structural characteristics and development trends.

"With the help of data visualization and multi-dimensional analysis functions, users can dig into the local advantageous industries, monitor consumption trends and structural changes, and make comparisons with neighboring regions, etc." Song Fei said the product can also provide API service mode in the future to integrate more macroeconomic data and social public data to paint a picture of the whole local economy, bringing new perspectives and tools to the government decision-making system in the era of big data.

The data will "talk"

On how to utilize "big data", Jack Ma mentioned in his internal speech that "in the next few years, we should data-enable all business, and data-enable all business. to be data-driven."

The second half of the sentence can be interpreted as allowing the big data generated and accumulated by Alibaba's various businesses to enrich Ali's ecosystem, and at the same time allowing the data contained in the ecosystem to generate new value and feed the ecosystem, which is a mutually reinforcing circular logic.

Song Fei told reporters that, for example, Sesame Credit, a subsidiary of Ant Financial Services, has been approved by the People's Bank of China for the preparation of a personal credit license, and in the future, it will analyze a large amount of network transaction and behavioral data, such as user credit history, behavioral preferences, ability to comply with the law, identity traits, connections and other information, and make a credit assessment of the user, and these credit evaluations will help Internet financial companies to make conclusions about the user's willingness to pay back the loan and the ability to repay the loan, and then make a conclusion on the repayment of the loan. These credit assessments can help Internet financial companies make conclusions about the user's willingness and ability to repay, and then provide the user with fast credit and cash installment services. Essentially, Sesame Credit is a credit system that collects data from the government and the financial system, and also fully analyzes the user's behavioral records on platforms like Taobao and Alipay.

Then again, for example, in the burgeoning field of rural e-commerce, the Ali Research Institute has been studying the Shaji model since 2010, and a series of subsequent research results on rural e-commerce based on data and case studies have been driven by the local government's scientific decisions to promote the development of local rural e-commerce, create jobs, and develop the local economy, all of which have contributed to the development of the local economy. The subsequent series of data- and case study-driven rural e-commerce research results have helped local governments make scientific decisions, promote the development of local rural e-commerce, create jobs and develop the local economy. By the end of 2014, 212 Taobao villages had sprung up across the country, and Alibaba launched its Thousand Counties and Ten Thousand Villages program this year, investing 10 billion yuan in three to five years to establish an e-commerce service system in rural areas.

In addition to analyzing data to help business, Song Fei told reporters that sometimes big data reports may differ greatly from the traditional impression of the conclusion.

Taking regional e-commerce as an example, in the 2014 list of China's top 100 e-commerce counties released by the Ali Research Institute, 41 counties in Zhejiang made the list, 16 in Fujian, and only four in Guangdong, a result that is quite different from the traditional impression. And in fact, this is brought about by the obvious differences between the e-commerce development of Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces in terms of geographic distribution and industrial structure.

Then again, outsiders often think that e-tailing replaces offline retailing, but in fact, McKinsey's study, "China's e-tailing revolution: online shopping fuels economic growth," by drawing on a large number of reports and data from the Ali Research Center (predecessor of the Ali Research Institute) and Taobao's UED user research team, finally found that: "About 60% of online consumption does replace offline retail; but the remaining 40% is new consumption that would not have been generated without e-tailing."

"The results of this research will help the community to accurately understand the relationship between e-tailing and offline retailing, and *** with exploring and building a good business development environment."