The normal and effective operation of a market depends on the amount of information obtained by both parties to the transaction and the reliability of the information; the smooth progress of any transaction must also be based on a large amount of real and reliable information. On a B2C cross-border e-commerce trading platform such as AliExpress, buyers can use the platform to understand the hot-selling products of related product categories, the best-selling stores, the transaction volume of the target store, the credit status, etc.; and sellers can also understand the latest industry trends, such as hot-selling products, competitors, and the relevant information of potential buyers and actual buyers.
Similar to other B2C cross-border e-commerce companies, AliExpress also mainly adopts marketing methods such as search engines, website alliances, email marketing and social marketing to expand overseas markets and attract overseas users. However, unlike the store-style operation model of LightInTheBox, AliExpress, as a B2C cross-border e-commerce transaction platform, is mainly responsible for serving both buyers and sellers on the platform. Therefore, there are certain differences between the two parties in the operation mode of information flow.
AliExpress attaches great importance to promotional activities. In addition to organizing merchants to participate in discount promotions, it also moves common domestic promotional activities abroad. AliExpress provides merchants with a variety of marketing tools, such as AliExpress Express, limited-time and limited-quantity discounts, buy-and-get-one-free, coupons and other store marketing tools to help them quickly increase store traffic. Taking the 2013 Western online shopping carnival “Cyber Monday” event as an example, AliExpress started preheating two months in advance, promoting and rendering on many social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and launching activities such as grabbing red envelopes and coupons in the snow and ice in northern hemisphere markets such as Russia and the United States, and launching red envelope grabbing games in the sun and beaches in southern hemisphere countries such as Australia, Brazil and Argentina. These creative promotional activities have made international consumers shine, and they have entered AliExpress out of curiosity and novelty, greatly increasing AliExpress’s website traffic during Christmas.
In addition, AliExpress also provides a fast and convenient way of communication for B2C cross-border e-commerce transactions, thereby achieving efficient transmission of information. In addition to being able to use the internationally accepted tool E-mail, AliExpress has also developed the “Trade Message” software, known as the international version of “Aliwangwang”, through which all buyers and sellers on the platform can negotiate transactions.