A few years ago, cross-border e-commerce was still a mysterious field. For most people, it was a very unfamiliar thing. Only a few people knew the term “cross-border e-commerce”, let alone how to make money in this field. Today, with the rapid development of China’s mobile Internet, cross-border e-commerce has staged a drama of a spark that can start a prairie fire. Looking at today’s Chinese Internet, all kinds of news and information about cross-border e-commerce can be seen everywhere.
So, what exactly is cross-border e-commerce? Cross-border e-commerce is the abbreviation of cross-border e-commerce. Its professional explanation is: an international commercial activity in which trading entities belonging to different customs territories reach transactions, make payments and settlements through e-commerce platforms, and deliver goods and complete transactions through cross-border logistics.
To put it simply, through e-commerce platforms, foreign goods are sold to domestic customers, or domestic goods are sold to foreign customers.
So, what is cross-border micro-e-commerce? In fact, it does not have a particularly professional definition. I think it is a branch of cross-border e-commerce, or a more detailed name.
There are three models of cross-border e-commerce, namely B2B (business to business), B2C (business to consumer), and C2C (individual to consumer). Cross-border micro-e-commerce is actually aimed at the two models of B2C (business to consumer) and C2C (individual to consumer). Therefore, the definition of cross-border micro-e-commerce is an international business activity in which enterprises and individuals sell domestic or foreign goods to foreign or domestic consumers through e-commerce platforms.
In fact, the embryonic stage of cross-border micro-e-commerce is not in recent years. It started as early as the end of the 20th century. It has gone through three stages to date. These three stages are the information service stage, the online transaction stage, and the full industrial chain service stage.
Cross-border micro-e-commerce 1.0 era (information service stage, 1999-2003): The main business model of this stage is the foreign trade information service model, that is, the model of displaying products online and conducting transactions offline. In this stage, the third-party platform only provides enterprise information and product display services, and does not involve any transaction links.
Cross-border micro-e-commerce 2.0 era (online transaction stage, 2004-2012): In 2004, Dunhuang.com was officially established as the world’s leading online foreign trade transaction platform. It is the first website in China to provide B2B online transactions for small and medium-sized enterprises. Its establishment marks the beginning of China’s cross-border micro-e-commerce 2.0 era. The most obvious change in this stage is the third-party platform. The function of the platform has changed from only providing display services to an online transaction platform, and transactions, payments, logistics, etc. have all been electronicized.
Cross-border micro-e-commerce 3.0 era (full industry chain service stage, 2013 to present): 2013 is a milestone year in the development of cross-border micro-e-commerce. In this year, cross-border micro-e-commerce completed an important transformation, from an online transaction platform model to a full industry chain service stage. The main manifestations are: large factories go online on e-commerce platforms, the scale of buyers increases, the number and amount of orders have increased significantly, the number of mobile users has doubled, and large service providers go online on e-commerce platforms. These five factors are the main pillars supporting cross-border micro-e-commerce to enter the full industry chain service stage. When they are complete, the era of cross-border micro-e-commerce 3.0 will officially begin.
In the context of the mobile Internet being very developed, the country vigorously promoting the “Internet +” strategy, and traditional enterprises being in turmoil, cross-border micro-e-commerce is developing at a lightning speed with its own excellent characteristics. As a breakthrough for many traditional enterprises and individual merchants seeking transformation, it is bound to burst out with huge positive energy and help enterprises and individual merchants complete their commercial counterattack.