The rise of cross-border e-commerce and analysis of the phenomenon of “overseas shopping”

In recent years, the phenomenon of purchasing on behalf of others has appeared frequently on social media, marking the internationalization of people’s shopping methods. Through personal channels, these purchasing agents provide consumers with authentic products from many well-known luxury brands including CK, Tiffany, Burberry, etc. at relatively cheap prices. However, with the proliferation of counterfeit goods and increasingly serious after-sales guarantee problems, consumers have begun to turn to “overseas shopping,” that is, visiting foreign shopping websites on their own to ensure the shopping experience and product quality. Eventually, purchasing agents and overseas shopping gradually evolved into a more efficient and international form – cross-border e-commerce.

Cross-border e-commerce can be divided into two modes: import and export. The export model refers to domestic sellers selling goods to foreign consumers through e-commerce platforms, while the import model refers to foreign sellers selling goods to domestic consumers through e-commerce platforms. In recent years, especially since 2012, a large number of Chinese sellers entered the cross-border e-commerce platform and took this opportunity to successfully earn their first pot of gold. These e-commerce platforms have gradually evolved into important gathering places for the world’s richest people. For example, according to the 2019 Forbes Global Rich List, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, the world’s largest cross-border e-commerce platform, became the world’s richest man with a fortune of US$131 billion.

According to the latest statistics from Statista, global retail e-commerce sales reached US$2.3 trillion in 2017, and this number is expected to grow to US$4.88 trillion by 2021. This growth momentum not only reflects the rapid development of global e-commerce, but also creates broad market opportunities for sellers in various countries.