Thank Alibaba for Revamping Your Omnichannel Strategy

1. Alibaba will be flush with cash. The company is raising a huge amount of money ($15 billion) through its impending IPO and will be focusing on making its online-to-offline strategy a winning force in the North American market.

2. Online-to-offline is Alibaba's next big thing. It recently acquired a 26 percent stake in Intime Retail, a Chinese department store. The two entities will form a joint venture focused on developing online-to-offline businesses in shopping malls, department stores and supermarkets in China. It's not unreasonable to expect Alibaba to perfect the "reverse showrooming" model in China before introducing it to a North American audience.