Due to the emergence of e-commerce, consumer concepts, consumption methods and the status of consumers are undergoing important changes. The development of the Internet has promoted the improvement of consumer sovereignty. The huge information processing capacity of the cross-border network marketing system provides consumers with unprecedented choice space for selecting products, making consumers’ purchasing behavior more rational. The consumer demand under the cross-border network environment has the following characteristics.
1. Personalization
On the one hand, the development of industrialization and standardized production methods has submerged the personality of consumers in a large number of low-cost, single products. On the other hand, in a shortage economy or a near-monopoly market, consumers have very few products to choose from, so their personality has to be suppressed. However, with the advent of the 21st century, the world has become a world intertwined with computer networks, the consumer goods market has become more and more abundant, the scope of consumer product selection has become globalized, and the design of products has become diversified. Consumers have begun to formulate their own consumption criteria, and the entire marketing has returned to the melody of personalization. No consumer’s consumption psychology is the same. Every consumer is a small consumer market, and personalized consumption will inevitably become the mainstream of consumption again.
2. Difference
Different online consumers will have different needs due to their different eras, countries, and cultural environments; even at the same level of demand, their needs will be different. Because cross-border online consumers come from all over the world, with different countries, nationalities, beliefs, and living habits, there will be obvious differences in demand. Therefore, if manufacturers engaged in cross-border online marketing want to succeed, they must seriously consider the relevant differences in the entire production process, from product conception, design, manufacturing, to product packaging, transportation, and sales, and take corresponding measures and methods based on the characteristics of different consumers.
3. Cross-cutting
In cross-border online consumption, consumption at all levels is not mutually exclusive, but closely linked, and there is a wide range of cross-cutting between demands. For example, on the same shopping list, consumers can buy the most common daily necessities and expensive accessories at the same time to meet physiological needs and the need to be respected. This situation occurs because online virtual stores can include almost all products, and people can browse multiple products in a short period of time, thus generating cross-cutting purchase needs.
4. Hierarchy
Internet consumption itself is a high-level form of consumption, but in terms of its consumption content, it can still be divided into different levels from low to high. It should be noted that under the traditional business model, people’s needs generally extend and develop from low levels to high levels. Only when the low-level needs are met will high-level needs arise. In the initial stage of online consumption, consumers focus on the consumption of spiritual products; in the mature stage of online consumption, when consumers have fully mastered the rules and operations of online consumption and have a certain sense of trust in online shopping, consumers will shift from focusing on the purchase of spiritual consumer goods to the purchase of daily consumer goods. Because of this, whether it is a commercial website with the direct purpose of selling various products or other types of non-commercial websites, they all regard online games, text messages, BBS and other spiritual consumption as the basis for promoting the development of various business of the website.