Cross-border e-commerce is different from traditional foreign trade, and there are great differences between the two. Below we will compare and analyze traditional foreign trade and cross-border e-commerce from five perspectives: subject, link, form, taxation, and mode.
1.2.1 Different subjects: the subject of traditional foreign trade is information flow, while the subject of cross-border e-commerce is commodity flow
In e-commerce transactions, there are four basic “flows”, namely information flow, commodity flow, capital flow, and logistics. The definition of information flow refers to the process in which people use various methods to achieve the purpose of information exchange, so that face-to-face direct conversations are transformed into communication using various modern transmission media, including information collection, transmission, processing, storage, retrieval, and analysis.
Unlike traditional foreign trade, the subject of cross-border e-commerce has become commodity flow. Commodity flow refers to the movement process of commodity transactions and commodity ownership transfer between sellers and buyers, specifically a series of activities related to commodity transactions. The flow cost of each factor is different, and its size is also different.
The development of science and technology and the construction of information networks have made the flow cost of information flow smaller and faster than before. Therefore, with the advent of the Internet economy and the process of electronic commerce, traditional payment methods and channels are increasingly different from the characteristics of commodity flow. In the era of cross-border e-commerce, merchants use the Internet to sell goods overseas. Therefore, commodity flow has gradually become the main body of cross-border e-commerce.