Overseas shopping experience and platform response strategies after cross-border e-commerce tax reform

The core focus of the cross-border e-commerce 3.0 era is to improve consumers’ shopping experience. Therefore, feedback from overseas shopping consumers is crucial to the transformation and development of cross-border e-commerce platforms. In view of this, the experiences of different overseas shopping consumers have given us in-depth thoughts on the impact of the new tax reform policy on cross-border e-commerce.

Feedback from overseas shopping consumers

1. Changes in imported commodity prices
   Lucy, a “baby mother” from Ningbo, found that the increase in taxes led to an increase in the total cost when purchasing Australian milk powder on a cross-border e-commerce platform. Despite this, she still believes that the prices of cross-border e-commerce platforms are still competitive compared with physical stores.

2. Adaptability of overseas shopping model
   Christy spends more than 200,000 yuan every year by purchasing on cross-border e-commerce platforms. Although the impact on ordinary overseas shopping was not significant, she was aware of the high taxes she would face after exceeding her purchase limit, which confused her and did not know how to adjust her overseas shopping methods.

3. No significant price fluctuations
   Another overseas shopping expert, Isabell, said that the new cross-border import tax policy has limited impact on her. She purchases goods with the help of the tax-included policy of large platforms. Although she understands that this kind of subsidy cannot exist for a long time, she still hopes to find the best overseas shopping channels.

Countermeasures for cross-border e-commerce platforms

Major e-commerce platforms have adopted different measures to maintain market competitiveness after the tax reform:

• Tmall Global revealed that merchants have promised not to increase prices in the short term and may provide additional subsidies, but long-term price fluctuations are difficult to predict.
• JD Global Shopping pointed out that the tax reform may cause the market for high-end luxury goods to shrink, especially the issue of additional costs for orders exceeding 2,000 yuan.
• Jackfruit reduces costs by adjusting categories, overseas warehousing and procurement teams to find new market advantages.
• NetEase Kaola Overseas Shopping believes that although the tax rate has increased, the overall adjustment will be limited, while Vipshop confidently stated that it will not be affected by the policy change.
• Suning.com Overseas Shopping It is clear that it will speed up customs clearance and reduce inventory to cope with the new situation of cross-border e-commerce.
• Amazon China chooses the import route that is most beneficial to consumers based on the tax rate applicable to the category to adapt to policy changes.

Key points of cross-border e-commerce platform operations

With the implementation of the new tax reform policy for cross-border e-commerce, this field is facing opportunities and challenges. In 2016, the purchasing power of cross-border import e-commerce continued to grow, but they also needed to face the transformation pressure brought about by the implementation of the positive list system. Especially for some small cross-border e-commerce companies that have long relied on low-price strategies and policy arbitrage, how to adapt to new policies and select high-quality categories will become the key to future operations.

In summary, the challenges brought about by cross-border e-commerce tax reform not only affect consumers’ shopping experience, but also force platforms to make profound self-adjustments. In the future, how major e-commerce platforms find new competitive strategies amid policy changes will be an important issue worthy of attention.