As the offline model of foreign trade is relatively mature, leveraging online and establishing a closed business loop faces great challenges. However, buyers’ online purchasing needs are driving offline traders to move online. As of the end of 2015, there were millions of domestic suppliers on Alibaba’s B2B platform, tens of millions of domestic buyers, and hundreds of millions of overseas buyers. The number of buyers far exceeded the number of suppliers, and the market potential was considerable.
Overseas Class B buyers are all over the world, and the main overseas buyers are from Europe, North America, Central and South America. The top ten foreign demand markets with the largest volume of inquiries are the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Canada, Russia, Australia, Germany, Austria, Malaysia and Brazil. Among them, the United States is still China’s largest exporter, and the number of inquiries far exceeds that of other countries. 50% of American companies will conduct half of their purchases on the Internet: 59% of buyers have begun to use online purchasing as their main purchasing method; The single purchase amount of Type B buyers is 5 times that of individual buyers, and the average annual contribution is 45 times that of individual buyers: the number of disputes is 11% lower than that of individual buyers, and the refund rate is 34% lower than that of individual buyers.
The manufacturing industry in Africa and countries along the “Belt and Road” is rising. Emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and South America are growing rapidly. Products such as machinery, consumer electronics, clothing, automobiles, and motorcycles are growing rapidly. Overseas demand is huge, and the sports, fitness and entertainment industry has become an overseas business opportunity.
The success of China’s manufacturing and trade is mainly due to its extensive and comprehensive ecosystem – a complete supplier network, a large and skilled workforce, and modern logistics infrastructure. Manufacturing companies promote process innovation and maintain unique scale advantages. The supplier network is large-scale and wide-ranging, which can assist manufacturing companies in quickly responding to changes in customer needs. China has more than 140,000 machinery suppliers, 75,000 communication equipment manufacturers, and 104,000 transportation equipment manufacturers, five times larger than Japan.
China’s large and flexible labor force allows companies to expand production scale at a speed that is difficult to match in other countries. China has 150 million manufacturing workers, far more than the 14 million in the United States, 9 million in Japan, and 4 million in South Korea. It is three times the population of Vietnam’s new low-cost manufacturing labor force. This ecosystem also includes a modern transportation network composed of highways, railways, and airports to ensure efficient connection of needs from all over the world. Nowadays, trade is declining, the economy is under great downward pressure, and the export advantage of Chinese manufacturing has weakened.
In terms of labor costs, research by Boston Consulting Group shows that China’s manufacturing cost advantage compared with the United States has dropped from 14% to less than 5% in the past ten years (2004-2014). This change It will cause companies to re-evaluate their manufacturing locations, resulting in a huge shift in the global economy. The United States has significantly improved its manufacturing cost optimization and has become the country with the lowest manufacturing costs among developed economies. A large number of U.S. companies are relocating their manufacturing industries back, thereby increasing domestic procurement demand in the United States.
Combining mature offline processes such as customs clearance, trade statistics, foreign exchange settlement and tax refunds with B2C’s flexible online matching, payment, logistics, evaluation, services, etc., to promote the development of foreign trade, this may be the key to the development of cross-border The main purpose of B2B. Therefore, if we can accumulate from B2C to B2B, will it be much easier to operate? First of all, B2B e-commerce platforms are rapidly becoming the main sales channel for brands, wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers.
B2B has always been the main body in foreign trade data. In the context of a sluggish industrial economy, promoting supply-side reform in countries with “Internet + traditional industries” is also an opportunity for the development of B2B e-commerce. In the past two years, whether it is domestic trade or foreign trade, e-commerce B2B has suddenly become extremely popular and is highly sought after by capital. Perhaps B2C has been “bad”, and B2B is too large and not mature enough, so the capital market has always the most sensitive sense of smell. , B2B e-commerce for small and medium-sized enterprises is now at the forefront, and the investment and financing environment is better.
The accumulation of Internet competitiveness does not happen overnight. Since it is a trend, you must become famous as early as possible. Secondly, B2B customer experience is increasingly converging with B2C user experience. Thanks to the maturity of Internet infrastructure and the rapid development of search, payment, mobile, logistics and other technologies, the form of international trade is profoundly changing the “global real-time supply chain”. Small batch and high-frequency procurement forms are becoming the mainstream of trade. Class B buyers have increasingly higher requirements for suppliers, which are becoming very close to the requirements of individual consumers for B2C. They not only require a richer product selection and more competitive prices, but also need to improve order fulfillment and logistics. , Customer service has a faster response.
Recently, Amazon launched a B2B platform, which is terrible news for many manufacturers and distributors, which requires 7×24 hours online order service. Thirdly, it is the B2B platform that is adding fuel to the fire, and they are all upgrading to transactions and comprehensive services. Many B2B platforms are currently at best an intermediary, playing a matching role, similar to the “Online Canton Fair”, and serving as a bridge for communication between supply and demand parties.
Supply chain, payment, logistics, credit, insurance, credit and many other links are not in the online category, that is, transactions are not online. Now they are trying to transform into a bulk trading platform, providing domestic and foreign merchants with supply and demand information and an online marketing platform, while helping both parties directly complete transactions and support services to create credit protection.