From a purely operational perspective, traditional foreign trade is actually simpler than cross-border e-commerce. There is more time when there are no orders. You can go to foreign trade fairs or publish online supply information. After you have stable customers, you can place large orders in stages. To support, you don’t have to worry about online sales orders every day. Foreign trade companies that have been focusing on the industry for many years will accumulate a large number of valuable resources in many fields such as freight forwarding, banking, insurance, customs, commodity inspection, taxation, chambers of commerce, warehousing and logistics, especially goodwill and reputation resources.
These tangible and intangible competitiveness will need to be accumulated again once moved to online retail, and they may not be able to do better than small sellers. After all, the rules of the platform will not favor anyone alone. Cross-border B2B e-commerce has not developed as rapidly as B2C. It originated from the display of yellow pages information and has now tended to realize complete closed-loop transactions and move toward full-service services integrated with big data.
Currently, information display services are still the main content of foreign trade B2B platforms, such as Alibaba, China Chemical Network, Made in China Marco Polo Network, Global Sources, GMC Global Market, foreign American MFG, Saudi Arabia TradeKey, South Korea Ecplaza/EC21, European Yellow Pages EuroPages, etc., launch profit-making content such as membership fees, bidding rankings, prime booths, and in-site advertising for users. They still focus on information display and transfer offline information to the Internet. The core of the model is to occupy a large number of suppliers. and product information, buyers’ inquiry/inquiry volume is the key indicator.
Once the matching transaction is completed, other links are traditional offline operations. On the other hand, B2B Marketplaces such as DHgate/eBay/Osell prefer comprehensive transactions. In the past two years, B2C Dalong.com has transformed into B2B business, with online distribution and offline layout in global online trade fairs. The procurement cycle of offline channels is long, and buyers generally make purchases a year and a half in advance. They often still have to adapt to a certain target customer group, and the replacement of such “standard products” is slow. Online channels are completely different. Companies launch new products, allowing users to experience new products faster and in a shorter time. The audience is borderless, surpassing world-class exhibitions.
However, foreign trade companies and foreign buyers conduct product display and exchanges online, and complete the import and export of goods offline according to general trade. This is still traditional trade in nature, and this part is fully included in customs trade in the form of goods. statistics. In addition, platform companies that provide import and export services for foreign trade companies help small and medium-sized enterprises import and export goods, and declare to the customs during the actual transit. The operations of customs clearance and commodity inspection, foreign exchange settlement and tax refund are relatively mature and standardized.
For B2C, products and services should be the main focus. To open a store on the platform, users do not need to know too much about the seller, while B2B respects two trusts and one guarantee, that is, “trust, credit, and after-sales guarantee”. Information flow is only part of it, B2B is based on business reputation. Later, represented by Dunhuang Network, based on the supply and demand display, it aimed at the small wholesale model and began to enter into guaranteed transactions. Buyers and sellers directly complete orders, payments, shipments, receipts, evaluations and other links through the platform, realizing a closed-loop online transaction process.
This kind of small-amount transaction is closer to Category C, and the risk is easier for the buyer to accept. The platform starts to provide value-added content, such as membership, bidding advertising, transaction commissions, payment settlement, foreign trade credit, etc. , as well as offline exhibitions, journals, exchange meetings, foreign trade universities and other services. Small and medium-sized cross-border wholesale business will become more popular in the future.
Recently, led by Alibaba Yidatong, supply and demand matching and online transactions are carried out based on system or manual information matching, integrating B2B e-commerce supply chain, payment, customs clearance, logistics, financial credit, etc. A series of services are opened up to realize the integration of online transactions and foreign trade services. Nowadays, various B2B platforms tend to be “close to the production end, close to the processing end, and close to the consumer end”. Comprehensive B2B e-commerce is oriented to the intermediate transaction market, and vertical B2B e-commerce is oriented to industry segments. In addition, on the periphery of B2P e-commerce, there are also derivative information services such as marketing promotion, industry analysis, keyword bidding, and pay-per-click.
Currently, cross-border e-commerce policies mainly target B2C, while B2B basically follows traditional trade methods. The development situation of the cross-border B2B model is excellent, but there is still an urgent need to deepen reforms, improve the service ecology, and innovate models and successfully Experience, policy systems and other aspects are still in the process of exploration. The blurring of the boundaries between small batch B2B and B2C brings certain difficulties to supervision.
Technical standards, business processes, supervision models and other aspects of cross-border e-commerce B2B related aspects are being piloted first. Hangzhou’s pilot measures are of some reference, including formulating B2B business and enterprise identification standards and formulating declarations. procedures and facilitation of customs clearance measures, the establishment of an online credit insurance system and payment system, and the construction of supporting facilities such as overseas warehouses and public bonded warehouses.