Cross-border e-commerce, referred to as cross-border e-commerce (cross-border/e-commerce), is derived from “small foreign trade”. It originally refers to individual buyers using the Internet platform to purchase products from abroad, using third-party payment methods to pay, and sellers using express delivery to complete the delivery of goods.
Cross-border e-commerce has two meanings: narrow and broad. In a narrow sense, cross-border e-commerce specifically refers to cross-border online retail, which is actually basically equivalent to cross-border retail, including B2C and C2C models. It refers to a new form of international trade in which trading entities belonging to different customs territories reach transactions through e-commerce platforms for cross-border payment and settlement, and logistics use air parcels, mail, express delivery and other methods to deliver to buyers and complete transactions through cross-border logistics.
In essence, it uses electronics and electronic technology as a means, takes business as the core, transfers the original traditional sales and shopping channels to the Internet, breaks down the barriers between countries and regions, and makes the entire commodity sales reach a state of globalization, networking, intangibility, personalization and integration. Cross-border online retail is a new form of trade that has emerged when the Internet has developed to a certain stage. From the perspective of customs statistics, cross-border e-commerce in a narrow sense refers to the sale of small packages on the Internet, and its basic target is the end consumer (commonly known as B2C or C2C). However, with the development of cross-border e-commerce, some small B-type merchants who are fragmented and engage in small-scale wholesale transactions have also become consumer groups (B2B). Since it is difficult to strictly distinguish and define such small B-type merchants and C-type individual consumers in reality, the narrow cross-border also includes this part in the cross-border retail content.
In a broad sense, cross-border e-commerce is basically equivalent to foreign trade e-commerce, which refers to an international commercial activity in which trading entities belonging to different customs territories use e-commerce to digitize the display, negotiation and transaction links in traditional import and export trade, and deliver goods and complete transactions through cross-border logistics.
The statistical objects of cross-border e-commerce in a broad sense are mainly the commodity trading part of cross-border e-commerce (excluding the service part), which includes both cross-border retail (narrow part) in cross-border e-commerce transactions and the B2B part of cross-border e-commerce. Among them, the B2B part includes not only the part of online transactions achieved through cross-border trading platforms, but also the part of online transactions negotiated through Internet channels to facilitate offline transactions.