You may have just been engaged in cross-border e-commerce, and you must have a question in your mind: Is there any development prospect for the B2C export model of cross-border e-commerce?
In terms of career choice and career development, people always have It is the concern about the sunk costs behind the choice that leads to hesitation or hesitation. The author would like to encourage you who are reading this article that choosing cross-border e-commerce export is the best choice you can make in the field of e-commerce today.
The author entered the e-commerce related industry in 2001. It has been 19 years now and I have witnessed the vigorous development of the e-commerce industry: in the early years, there was no payment platform and I could only go to the bank counter to fill in the form and transfer money. Without express delivery, I could only go through the postal service. Express delivery or meet-and-greet transactions in the same city; self-built website in the initial stage of e-commerce from 2003 to 2005; joined Alibaba in 2007, providing training and consultation to thousands of merchants from the perspective of the platform; in 2010, became the first for AliExpress publicity that attracts sellers; in 2016, it became the largest cross-border e-commerce B2C export subject content provider; in 2019, it successfully organized and held the first national cross-border e-commerce innovation and entrepreneurship competition; until today, we see diversified e-commerce in the new economic era The rise of the business model
The author saw several important historical nodes in it. Chinese sellers have gradually moved from the manufacturing industry chain driven by bulk exports after the reform and opening up to self-produced and sold through domestic e-commerce platforms, and even appeared Online retail brands from e-commerce platforms have today led to a round of retail reform oriented to improving consumer experience called “new retail” in the industry. We see that in this era, the Chinese are moving from manufacturing “things” to serving “people” “The change in thinking has also seen that Chinese young people with dual identities of buyers and sellers have broken away from the older generation’s understanding of the value of “matter-oriented”, and then accepted and entered the higher value of “people-oriented” services. retail stage.
What this article describes is the prototype of a new form of cross-border trade based on the Internet platform. We call it cross-border e-commerce export B2C. The author prefers to call it international retail based on the Internet. This newly emerged trade form has never appeared in history. Through the Internet and air freight, the geographical distance and psychological distance in commodity trade are being greatly shortened. In international trade, geographical distance and psychological distance have always been the biggest bottlenecks in industry development, and are also the biggest sources of innovative profits.
Starting from the East India Company, modern merchants have been rapidly shortening the distance between countries, different producers and commodities and different consumers through sea transportation, so that consumers around the world can enjoy the benefits of various countries. commodities, thereby achieving the improvement of life quality, cultural integration, and economic interconnection and prosperity.
In the field of international trade, any business form that can shorten this distance has the potential to become the next direction of industry development, and the Internet-based international retail described in this article is exactly this. New business forms
There are still many problems in the cross-border e-commerce industry. Whether it is platform rules or the strategies and methods discussed in the book, a large part of them arise in the process of resisting these problems. Readers can pay attention to these questions while reading.
When an industry that conforms to historical trends is developing rapidly, it will inevitably force and promote the rapid maturity of a large number of surrounding industries. Speaking of geographical distance, in the past five years, we have gone from only postal parcel delivery to new freight methods such as parcels, dedicated lines, and overseas warehouses. As international aviation costs and terminal delivery costs further decline, We believe that in the not-too-distant future, we will see international express parcels delivered within two days or even the next day. Then we will discuss logistics, and many of the problems caused by 2 to 3 weeks of delivery time will no longer exist.
International retail based on the Internet, one of the very important backgrounds is based on the Internet. The Internet’s natural openness, sharing, and multi-cultural collision and exchange without distance enable people to treat each other more honestly.
Another very important element is retail. The author mentioned above that Chinese enterprises are gradually moving from manufacturing to tertiary industries such as service industry and retail industry. The most important thinking in the service industry and retail industry is ” “Taking customer satisfaction as the goal”, businesses and business models have been generated around this goal, and ultimately creating time-saving, labor-saving, pleasant, reassuring and other experiences for customers are the goal and source of revenue.
When people begin to recognize the value of others’ services and are willing to pay for them, China’s e-commerce retail industry begins to move from low prices to personalization, customization, high quality, and brand loyalty. Along the way, China’s e-commerce After ten years, the fierce market competition of Taobao and Tmall has emerged the first batch of a new generation of business leaders in China who have the most profound Internet culture and know how to better serve customers.
Cross-border e-commerce has put forward higher requirements for this. Practitioners need to understand how to better meet the needs of different cultures and cultures around the world in the context of internationalization.
Consumers are accustomed to discerning needs.
In 2019, domestic cross-border e-commerce merchants are generally facing problems such as low profits, fierce homogeneous competition, difficulty in recruiting talents, and fragmented traffic. This is different from the 2007-2012 Taobao period. The development trajectory of domestic e-commerce represented by Taobao is exactly the same. In 2013, Taobao proposed the development logic of small but beautiful. Domestic e-commerce began to emphasize people-oriented, thus catering to the various subcultural market segments of the new generation of young people.
Similarly, cross-border e-commerce for Chinese sellers will inevitably experience the same development trajectory. Take the AliExpress platform as an example. From 2010 to 2016, these six years were a period when the platform functions went from rudimentary to perfect. Today, the focus is increasingly turning to how to optimize service quality to support the competitiveness of the platform model in the global market.
While constantly facing rapid changes in platform rules and pressure from low-price competition in the Taobao era, the seller group is gradually growing into a new generation of merchants serving consumers with multi-cultural backgrounds on a global scale. After many years of observation by the author, Chinese sellers have the most potential among global retail sellers in this regard. In 2019, mainland China’s cross-border e-commerce sellers and platforms have moved from simple and crude traffic conversion to intensive cultivation of traffic and old customer repurchase mining, content diversion, social network marketing and social brand management, and refined management returns to sellers The result is higher profits from fewer orders.
So, in such an environment, the author believes that cross-border e-commerce B2C exports will continue to strengthen the barrier-free payment, rapid delivery between regional countries, air and land transportation, automatic multi-language translation, and cross-language real-time Communication, modularization of information description, internationalization of design and marketing styles, personalized customization of subcultures, social and content-led traffic and other development directions.
In the short term, cross-border e-commerce led by large multinational platforms will remain the mainstream model, and in such a large platform model that seeks common ground while reserving differences, the differences and boundaries between China and foreign countries in the retail field are disappearing.
What our generation of cross-border e-commerce sellers are about to face is a Chinese e-commerce market that has expanded five times. In the development of e-commerce in the past ten years, each of us, whether as a buyer Everyone, whether as a seller, has experienced the most unique development stage in global e-commerce. Global manufacturing factories have transformed into selling goods to everyone, to cross-border retail for everyone, and then to personalized customization-driven smart and agile manufacturing under a diverse consumer culture. It is the background and opportunity of this generation of Chinese businessmen.
So, readers who are reading this article, I encourage you to strengthen your confidence in engaging in cross-border e-commerce, because you are standing in front of an unprecedented opportunity at this moment, and I encourage you to show your full enthusiasm Investing in this promising industry is a career worthy of your active learning and patient accumulation. I hope that by reading the content of this article, you can improve your personal career and participate in the changes of the times from a national perspective.