Cross-border e-commerce has developed to this day, and there are still many imperfections in its operation. For example: it is difficult for business entities to achieve traffic concentration; there are weak links in the industrial chain; relevant policies will be introduced one after another; and consumers will continue to deepen their understanding of the industry. This shows that my country’s cross-border e-commerce field is generally still in the embryonic stage of development.
Many cross-border e-commerce platforms are supported by powerful e-commerce companies. Referring to the financing information they have released in the past, we can summarize the following rules: the self-operated B2C model is a heavy model, which requires a relatively high scale of financial support; Yangmatou and others adopt the direct delivery platform model, and its first round of financing scale reached 10 million US dollars, which also requires relatively high financial support; in comparison, the financial support obtained by the shopping guide platform is much smaller; Mitao.com, as an overseas product flash purchase platform, has a first round of financing of 5 million US dollars, and the financial support is relatively small.
It should be noted that many overseas retailers have also launched product transportation services for domestic consumers. A representative example in this regard is Macy’s, whose official website can identify Chinese IP addresses and provide corresponding information services according to the habits of Chinese consumers.
In the past, when domestic users selected overseas products and consumed them, overseas retailers were in a passive position, waiting for consumers to come to them. Today, these retailers have begun to study in depth the operating model that meets the needs of the Chinese market. Among them, most overseas retailers adopt the self-operated B2C model. Although the future direction of the industry cannot be predicted in advance, referring to the overall development status of my country’s e-commerce industry, platforms adopting different models may also have different development scales in the future.
Based on the transaction scale, domestic e-commerce platforms are divided into the following three levels: Taobao platform adopting C2C model and Tmall Mall adopting B2C model belong to the first level; comprehensive self-operated B2C platforms such as JD Mall belong to the second level; Vipshop and Fanli.com (shopping guide/rebate model) belong to the third level. The overall transaction scale of e-commerce platforms in the first level is 9 times higher than that in the second level, and the second level is 9 times higher than that in the third level.
When the transaction scale of cross-border e-commerce reaches a certain level, if the same method is used to divide it, the platforms using various operating models can be divided into the following three levels: the first level is overseas purchasing platforms and direct delivery/direct transportation platforms; the second level is comprehensive self-operated cross-border B2C platforms; the third level is overseas commodity flash purchase platforms and shopping guide/rebate platforms.
Referring to the distinction between domestic e-commerce models, the higher-level cross-border e-commerce model may also be several times higher than the lower-level one. In other words, there may be a very large gap in scale between the models at each level.
However, the cross-border e-commerce industry will also follow its own trajectory in the process of development, and the final result of its hierarchical division may also be very different from that of my country’s e-commerce industry. But one thing is certain, that is, platforms using different models must provide different resource support and specific processing capabilities in the operation of user data statistics, consumer demand analysis, commodity supply and other links.
The business entity needs to have a clear understanding of the model it ultimately chooses, and analyze its future development situation in combination with its own resource integration capabilities. Wild growth is the main feature of the current participants in the cross-border e-commerce field. All companies operating in this field or planning to enter this field must find a development path that suits them in order to highlight their own competitive advantages in the midst of layers of siege.