In the overall transaction process of cross-border e-commerce, logistics costs generally account for 20% to 30% of the total transaction costs, and logistics service providers are also the largest group in the entire cross-border e-commerce ecological chain. Cross-border e-commerce companies must face problems such as a sharp increase in logistics costs and collective price increases of postal parcels. This series of problems has aggravated the severe situation of the development of the international logistics industry.
At present, one of the commonly used international logistics methods for cross-border e-commerce is small parcels. On the one hand, the threshold for cross-border small parcels is very low, with a weight limit of 2 kilograms, which means that if your product is a pair of sunglasses, a skirt or a pair of earrings, it can be easily sent away by small parcels without being restricted by the “weight segment”. Because most buyers are scattered C-end (consumers), small parcels naturally undertake the transportation tasks of “fast, small, and small”. In addition, cross-border e-commerce small parcels have a wide range and can be sent to places with post offices all over the world. However, a fatal weakness of small parcels is timeliness. A series of problems such as the specific time of ordering, sorting, and packaging, the location of transit, the transport party, and the designated delivery courier cannot be achieved by small parcels unless they are solved by E-mail with logistics information.
These “small package” businesses are no longer sustainable in terms of their current development. For example, the purchase price of a hat sent by mail is 20 yuan, and the selling price on eBay is 6 US dollars, which is 38 yuan at the average exchange rate. Its weight plus the outer packaging is 300 grams in total, and the postage is 20 yuan. In this way, the e-commerce company has no profit at all.
Although the “quasi-dumping” logistics model of small packages of cross-border e-commerce is very cheap and undertakes a large amount of cross-border logistics business, it has been proven that this form has also greatly damaged the interests of logistics companies and sellers in consumer countries. Customs in Russia, Argentina and other countries have already taken action. They have intercepted a large number of cross-border packages, and the European Union has also begun to take action on small packages in terms of taxation. Under this severe situation, “small packages” can no longer meet the needs of most sellers.