Amazon’s overseas purchase business has become the strategic focus of Amazon China. From the perspective of structure, Amazon’s overseas purchase includes “overseas purchase·direct purchase”, “overseas purchase·direct mail” and “overseas purchase·flash purchase”. Among them, “overseas purchase·direct purchase” means that Amazon directly purchases from the origin of the goods and sells them in the country through general trade. It does not belong to cross-border e-commerce business in essence; “overseas purchase·direct mail” and “overseas purchase·flash purchase” belong to the direct mail mode and bonded mode of cross-border e-commerce respectively.
Amazon first launched “overseas purchase·direct mail” and chose Shanghai as the customs clearance port. In August 2014, Amazon China signed a memorandum of understanding and cooperation with China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone and Shanghai Information Investment Co., Ltd. The three parties will cooperate in cross-border e-commerce business in the free trade zone and establish a cross-border e-commerce platform in the free trade zone.
In September 2014, Amazon in the United States significantly reduced the shipping costs of some products directly mailed to China. During the “Double Eleven” period in 2014, Amazon China tried out the “Overseas Purchase” service, and simultaneously introduced the Western “Black Friday” shopping carnival at the end of November. So far, consumers can either place orders directly on Amazon in the United States as before, or log in to the Amazon China site, enter the Overseas Purchase channel, and purchase foreign products in full Chinese.
One of the pain points of overseas direct mail is that cross-border delivery time is too long, especially in the past era of overseas shopping transit, 20 days for delivery is very common. With hundreds of storage bases in major countries around the world and the integration of international air logistics, Amazon eventually shortened the direct mail time to 6~8 working days. It can be said that for the overseas purchase business, in addition to its rich overseas supply, Amazon is also ahead of its peers in cross-border logistics.
However, even if Amazon has shortened the delivery time of overseas direct mail products to more than a week, it still cannot satisfy the picky Chinese consumers. Therefore, after opening up the “Overseas Purchase·Direct Mail” business, Amazon launched the “Overseas Purchase·Flash Purchase” business based on the bonded stocking model in August 2015. Under this model, consumers can receive the goods within an average of 3 days after placing an order. If the previous overseas direct mail was the 1.0 era of Amazon China’s cross-border e-commerce, then with the launch of Amazon’s “Overseas Purchase·Flash Purchase” business, Amazon China’s overseas purchase business has entered the 2.0 era.