Cross-border e-commerce has multifunctional and comprehensive characteristics such as overseas promotion, transaction support, online payment, after-sales service, credit system and dispute resolution, which requires its logistics services to further develop towards the trend of small batches, multiple frequencies and fast turnover. Since cross-border e-commerce logistics activities involve logistics systems of multiple countries or regions, and are closely related to customs clearance, inspection and quarantine, and international cargo insurance business of international trade, the operation process is complex, the logistics distance is longer, the time is longer, and the risk is higher, and the visualization and timeliness of goods delivery are required to be high. Existing 3PL service providers may do well in a certain link or main link, but their ability to integrate resources and operate across the supply chain on a global scale is limited, and they cannot meet the comprehensive, agile, flexible, low-cost and high-efficiency requirements of cross-border e-commerce logistics. Therefore, 4PL, which is based on supply chain integrated solutions and is committed to providing various value-added services, has become an inevitable choice.
Currently, the solution to cross-border e-commerce logistics problems is to build overseas warehouses. Cross-border e-commerce export companies can alleviate the problem of long logistics delivery time by building overseas warehouses in the company’s main target countries; the second is to build border warehouses in cities adjacent to the main business target countries, such as building warehouses in Harbin for trade with Russia. Both methods can solve or alleviate the problem of cross-border e-commerce logistics and distribution. For cross-border import e-commerce, they can place the goods in the free trade zone first, just like Amazon, so that after the consumer places an order, the goods will be sent from the free trade zone, effectively shortening the delivery time.