AliExpress is an online trading platform built by Alibaba for the global market. It is known as the “international Taobao”. The AliExpress platform has the following characteristics.
(1) Guaranteed by Alipay account, transactions are safe and reliable, making it more convenient for Chinese e-commerce companies; the AliExpress platform supports language translation in the transaction communication process between buyers and sellers.
(2) The overall movement of goods is simple. With the help of the tool “Taobao Daixiao”, the Chinese information of Taobao goods can be directly translated into the other party’s language, which simplifies the language translation operation of listing goods.
(3) AliExpress currently mainly focuses on direct delivery. For localized operations, only e-commerce companies themselves can improve the timeliness and customer experience of mailing. The platform itself has no requirements in this regard, so there are requirements for the weight and value of the products. Currently, most of the products concentrated on AliExpress are fashion products and accessories, as well as small household and sports products. These are small-volume and small-weight products, so when companies select products, they mainly use Chinese-style procurement.
(4) Compared with other platforms, AliExpress serves more small and medium-sized e-commerce companies and helps them to contact terminal wholesalers and retailers, realize fast sales of small batches and multiple batches, reduce the intermediate links of traditional processes, reduce costs, expand profit margins, and realize the integration of production, orders, payments, and logistics, which brings great convenience to e-commerce companies.
(5) AliExpress has restrictions on the qualifications of sellers. Currently, the platform only allows sellers from China, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Turkey to enter, while AliExpress’s buyer population covers more than 220 countries and regions around the world. Among the sellers who have entered, China occupies the majority of the market sales share, which is a great benefit to Chinese e-commerce companies.
(6) Although AliExpress covers a wide range, compared with the European and American markets, its main sales venue is in emerging third-party countries, so when selecting products, it mainly considers emerging third-party countries.