Alibaba Group submitted a business plan to the South Korean government.
The plan shows that in order to expand its business in South Korea, Alibaba Group will invest US$1.1 billion (1.4471 trillion won) in the Korean market in the next three years. Alibaba hopes to create 3,000 jobs directly or indirectly in the next three years through this investment.
This year, Alibaba will take the lead in investing US$200 million (263.2 billion won) in the first round to build a comprehensive logistics center in South Korea, covering an area of 180,000 square meters, equivalent to the size of 25 football fields. This will become the largest logistics center in South Korea in terms of single area. After the logistics center is put into use, the logistics and distribution time of AliExpress, Alibaba's cross-border e-commerce platform, will be greatly shortened, and the platform's competitiveness is expected to be further improved.
In addition, Alibaba also plans to invest US$100 million (131.6 billion won) to help Korean sellers' products circulate in the global market. Specifically, Alibaba will set up a procurement center to discover high-quality Korean products and open global sales channels in June this year to become an export platform for goods.
In addition to AliExpress, Alibaba also plans to sell Korean products on the group's multiple e-commerce platforms such as "Lazada" in Southeast Asia and "Miravia" in Spanish, with the goal of supporting 50,000 Korean stores within three years to enter the global market.
In addition, Alibaba will invest US$7.58 million (10 billion won) to solve the problem of "fake goods" that has been criticized in the Korean market. Alibaba will officially set up a customer service center composed of 300 professional customer service personnel to provide consumers with consultation and complaint services. For overseas products sold on AliExpress, Alibaba provides a no-reason return service within 90 days, and will provide a 100% refund if it is suspected that a fake product has been purchased. According to AliExpress, from October last year to this month, the platform has removed 5,000 merchants suspected of selling fake goods, removed a total of 1,824,810 suspected counterfeit goods from the shelves, and processed Korean consumers who purchased suspected fake goods. 42,476 items were returned.
Alibaba will cooperate with local Korean sellers in the long term to help Korean small and medium-sized enterprises expand overseas markets, and continue to improve issues such as consumer personal information protection.