The main business model in the era of cross-border e-commerce 1.0 is the foreign trade information service model of online display and offline transactions (a trading platform for the foreign trade field). The main function of the third-party platform in the cross-border e-commerce 1.0 stage is to provide an online display platform for corporate information and products, and does not involve any transaction links on the Internet. At this time, the profit model is mainly that the cross-border e-commerce platform charges membership fees (such as annual service fees) to the companies that display information. In the development process of the cross-border e-commerce 1.0 stage, bidding promotion, consulting services and other one-stop information flow value-added services for suppliers have gradually emerged, which is essentially an advertising revenue model.
In the cross-border e-commerce 1.0 stage, Alibaba International Station and Global Sources Network are typical representative platforms. During this period, a large number of cross-border e-commerce platforms mainly focusing on supply and demand information transactions have also emerged, such as Made-in-China.com, EC21.com of Korea, and Kellysearch. Although the cross-border e-commerce 1.0 stage has solved the problem of China’s trade information facing global buyers through the Internet, it still cannot complete online transactions. For the integration of the foreign trade e-commerce industry chain, only the information flow integration link has been completed.