When conducting cross-border e-commerce, sellers must first choose a cross-border e-commerce platform that requires human presence. When choosing a cross-border e-commerce platform, sellers must analyze themselves to determine their business model, and then make a reasonable choice based on the characteristics of the cross-border e-commerce platform. The following is an explanation from two aspects: the analysis of the seller’s own business positioning and the analysis of the cross-border e-commerce platform.
1. Analysis of the seller’s own business positioning
When conducting their own business positioning analysis, sellers must first clarify whether they are engaged in import cross-border e-commerce or export cross-border e-commerce. Import cross-border e-commerce is to transport goods from abroad to China, sell them, and earn the difference. Export cross-border e-commerce is to purchase goods in China or the seller produces goods and sells them abroad.
After choosing the trade direction they are engaged in, sellers need to choose their own sales model based on the scale and advantages of their own operations.
If you are an individual seller, it is recommended to choose the C2C sales model, which is more suitable for individual sellers who study and settle abroad. Whether you can provide shopping suggestions to buyers and drive buyers’ shopping enthusiasm is an important criterion for measuring whether you can become a qualified buyer. Although some B2C cross-border e-commerce platforms allow individual sellers to settle in, because there are many settled enterprises, individual sellers have poor competitiveness and cannot develop well, so it is not recommended for individual sellers to settle in B2C cross-border e-commerce platforms.
If you are a corporate seller, you need to choose B2B sales model or B2C sales model based on your own resources and areas of expertise.
For the B2B sales model, the seller faces corporate buyers, and the order volume is large. Whether the buyer’s trust can be obtained is very important for the development of the seller. If you want to engage in B2B cross-border e-commerce and obtain better benefits, corporate sellers need a lot of capital costs to open up the market and establish a brand, which requires a high level of seller’s own strength.
For the B2C model, the threshold is low, but due to the high frequency and small batch business characteristics: whether the timeliness of road logistics can be guaranteed and the buyer experience can be improved is a great test for the seller.
2. Analysis of cross-border e-commerce platform
After determining the business model for cross-border e-commerce, sellers need to analyze the cross-border e-commerce platform. From the introduction of the mainstream B2B cross-border e-commerce platforms, the mainstream B2C cross-border e-commerce platforms, and the mainstream C2C cross-border e-commerce platforms in the above sections, we can see that although the entry requirements of each platform are different (for example, Amazon requires sellers to have a legal, independently operated entity company registered in China; eBay platform requires sellers to undergo cross-border certification, etc.), as long as sellers have real and valid corporate information and qualifications, they can apply to enter the platform. When registering on the platform, sellers can operate according to the platform’s requirements.
When sellers choose a cross-border e-commerce platform, they mainly consider the following two aspects.
(1) The strength of the cross-border e-commerce platform
Cross-border e-commerce platforms that were established earlier, have a larger scale and influence, often have rich platform operation experience, and have better resources in member management, information management, market development, etc., and can provide sellers with good services.
(2) Service charges of cross-border e-commerce platforms
Currently, various cross-border e-commerce platforms provide a variety of free and paid services at different prices. Generally, the free services provided by cross-border e-commerce platforms are only basic services, including account registration, product release, etc., but there are restrictions on seller authentication and product promotion, so sellers need to choose appropriate platforms and services based on their own needs and purchasing power.