Brand ambassador

AliExpress wants to score points against Temu with Beckham

David Beckham is to win new customers for AliExpress.

(Bild: Nespresso)

The European Football Championship and sports icon David Beckham are set to help online retailer AliExpress gain ground on low-cost mail order companies Temu and Shein. Beckham, former captain of the England national team and husband of designer and musician Victoria Beckham, has been signed up as a brand ambassador, as announced by the Chinese parent company Alibaba.

The former world-class footballer will help to raise the profile of the Alibaba subsidiary - not least among the many soccer fans around the world. The European Championships in Germany should also help AliExpress get off to a flying start, where the retailer is a partner of UEFA.

After much hesitation, the Chinese online giant Alibaba has finally decided to invest heavily in its international business, as growth in its domestic market is slowing down. Alibaba is also reacting to the triumphant advance of online retailers Temu and Shein, which are also sweeping Europe with cheap goods ranging from clothing to jewelry.

Price war for the European Football Championship
AliExpress could now launch a price war for the football tournament in Germany. "Exceptional discounts" and offers on AliExpress have already been announced. The campaign will be paired with brand ambassador Beckham to attract more soccer fans to the Alibaba pages on the Internet.

The approach also appears to be inspired by arch-rival PDD Holdings and its Temu brand. The low-cost platform wooed US consumers with advertising around the major US football event, the Super Bowl. And not without success - according to the consulting firm Apptopia, 34 percent more consumers downloaded the Temu app on the day of the game than the day before.

Suitable target group
In terms of demographics and consumer behavior, soccer and football fans in Europe, South America and the USA are similar, said advertising expert Humphrey Ho from the consulting agency Hylink Digital. These are groups of buyers who pay attention to price and are affected by high inflation - in other words, they are also the target groups of low-cost portals.

Long hesitation
However, Alibaba is not completely new to the playing field. Founder Jack Ma had already announced in 2017 that he wanted to serve two billion customers around the globe by 2036. However, many markets were recently left to rival Temu. Alibaba hesitated too long, said industry observer Jianggan Li from Momentum Works. The group had discussed internally for years whether it should attack Amazon in its US home market. Competitor Temu, on the other hand, simply did this without long debates.

According to expert estimates, Temu had a total turnover of around 18 billion US dollars (16.6 billion euros) in 2023. The parent company PDD does not provide any information on the subsidiary's figures. Alibaba now has no choice but to respond to the challenge posed by the rapidly growing Temu, said industry expert Li. Otherwise, the company could be threatened with decline - and Beckham and the European Football Championships should also help to prevent this.