Yangduan cargo scanning live broadcast mode and its challenges

As a cross-border e-commerce platform, Yangmao’s pioneering overseas shopping scene shopping model has quickly attracted tens of thousands of overseas certified buyers since its official launch in December 2013. These buyers are located in many regions around the world, such as the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea. Through the “Shopping Live Broadcast” channel, consumers can simultaneously experience overseas discounts and offers, as if they are in a shopping scene on the other side of the ocean.

Buyer specials and limited time sales

The two major features of the “Shopping Live Broadcast” channel are buyer-made products and limited-time special sales. The former relies on buyers all over the world, who live broadcast the shopping scenes of major shopping malls, outlets and department stores in real time. This C2C model allows buyers to directly see the product conditions and place orders. The latter takes advantage of the time difference between overseas sales to create a sense of urgency, making users feel like they are rushing to buy in an overseas mall.

Problems with global cargo scanning

However, with the popularity of this model, some problems have begun to emerge. First of all, from a legal perspective, purchasing agents are essentially entrusted services rather than direct sales of goods. Therefore, in theory, purchasing agents do not need to bear responsibility for product quality. Although legal purchasing agents need to declare to the customs and pay corresponding taxes and fees, in actual operation, many purchasing agents enter the country through personal items and then conduct secondary sales, which is often in a regulatory gray area. According to the latest regulations, if the tax is evaded and the amount is large, it may constitute smuggling.

In addition, for some special goods such as cosmetics, it will be considered illegal if they are imported or sold without approval from the relevant departments or without inspection. Although the price of so-called “parallel imports” is low, the supply is unstable; even if you can obtain products at local market prices, taking into account factors such as tax rebates, the final selling price still has no obvious advantage compared to duty-free shops.

The most noteworthy thing is that due to the huge demand of Chinese consumers for overseas products, purchasing groups are frantically purchasing milk powder, diapers and other products around the world, resulting in supply shortages or even shortages in some areas. For example, in some cities in Australia and Germany, local supermarkets had to adopt purchase restrictions due to the large number of Chinese purchases. What’s more, in the Netherlands, two locals took extreme measures because they were dissatisfied with the behavior of Chinese purchasing agents.

To sum up, although Yangquan’s “shopping live broadcast” provides a novel and convenient shopping experience, the problems that come with it cannot be ignored. How to balance user experience with legal and regulatory requirements will be one of the key issues that need to be solved in future development.