Text|Liu Kuang.Recently, there is such a ** that has caused heated discussions on social **, and the protagonist is an electric tricycle, which is also known as "three jumpers". In **, the blogger gave a domestic electric tricycle to his father-in-law in the United States, and after careful decoration, the blogger's family drove the electric tricycle to the street, which immediately attracted the attention of many neighbors and stopped to take pictures. In fact, more and more domestic products have become popular in overseas markets, and behind the explosion of domestic products, it is also inseparable from the boost of the cross-border e-commerce industry.
In recent years, cross-border e-commerce has achieved rapid development, and many cross-border e-commerce platforms have risen rapidly and shined in the global e-commerce market. According to Nielsen's "2023 Chinese Cross-border E-commerce Platform Going Overseas***", the current average monthly visits of AliExpress, Shein, TikTok Shop and Temu are 5300 million times, 1900 million, 0700 million and 100 million.
In fact, cross-border e-commerce has been popular for a long time, and it has continued to heat up recently. According to iResearch data, the CAGR of the cross-border e-commerce market from 2017 to 2022 will reach 251%, with a projected CAGR of 16 from 2022 to 20254%, and the market size will exceed 10 trillion yuan in 2025. Behind the increasing popularity of cross-border e-commerce, it is related to many factors.
From the perspective of consumers, overseas consumers have gradually developed the habit of online shopping, which provides the possibility for the development of cross-border e-commerce. Due to the impact of the previous epidemic, offline activities have been hindered, and overseas consumers have continued to increase their acceptance of online shopping models and gradually developed the habit of online shopping, which has led to the continuous increase in the penetration rate of overseas e-commerce.
According to the "2022 Overseas Retail Consumption***" released by Dutch payment platform Adyen and KPMG, in 2022, due to the impact of the epidemic and other factors, the number of consumers shopping online through apps increased by 43 worldwide. In addition, according to Seven Senders' research, 22% of total B2C sales in Europe's 15 major e-commerce markets come from cross-border retail, and 73% of online shoppers choose overseas merchants. With the development of online consumption habits of overseas consumers and the improvement of their acceptance of overseas products, cross-border e-commerce has shown good development potential.
From the perspective of enterprises, e-commerce going overseas can help enterprises explore new growth curves. In fact, with the continuous popularization of the Internet, the penetration rate of the Internet in China has reached a fairly high level. According to the Annual Report on China's Internet Core Trends (2023) released by QuestMobile, in 2023, the scale of monthly active users of China's mobile Internet has exceeded 122.4 billion. From the data, it can be seen that the Internet traffic dividend is gradually approaching the ceiling, and traffic is the key to the development of e-commerce platforms, therefore, for major e-commerce platforms, it is urgent to find new increments. In this context, the overseas market, which has huge development prospects, has become the focus of e-commerce platforms, and the platforms have also accelerated the speed of going overseas, the number of cross-border e-commerce platforms is also increasing, and the development of the entire cross-border e-commerce industry has accelerated.
From the perspective of policy, the introduction of relevant policies has provided important support for the development of cross-border e-commerce. In recent years, policies related to the cross-border e-commerce industry have been introduced one after another, and the introduction of these policies has provided a solid foundation for the development of cross-border e-commerce. For example, in January 2023, the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs, and the State Administration of Taxation jointly issued the Announcement on Tax Policies for Cross-border E-commerce Export Returns, which proposes that cross-border e-commerce export returns that meet the requirements will be exempted from import duties, import value-added tax and consumption tax, and the export tariffs collected at the time of export will be refunded. The introduction of this series of policies has provided a good environment for the cross-border e-commerce industry and greatly promoted the development of the cross-border e-commerce industry.
All-round racing is definitely an extraordinary year for cross-border e-commerce. The "Four Tigers Going to Sea", represented by SHEIN, AliExpress, Temu, and TikTok, have made dazzling achievements in the field of cross-border e-commerce. According to dataAccording to the latest "2024 Mobile Market Report" released by AI, the top 4 in the global shopping APP** growth rate in 2023 are occupied by the "Four Little Dragons of China's e-commerce", namely Temu, Shein, AliExpress and TikTok Shop. The reason why domestic cross-border e-commerce platforms have been able to achieve such results also stems from the continuous improvement of their own competitiveness.
1. Spell **.
No matter where, whether at home or abroad, ** is always the factor that consumers pay the most attention to when buying goods. Especially in the context of inflation in overseas countries, consumers' purchasing power has weakened, and their attention to ** continues to increase, and they are increasingly favoring high-priced products. Therefore, competition has become a key strategy for cross-border e-commerce platforms.
Among them, Temu, a cross-border e-commerce shopping platform launched by Pinduoduo, still continues the low-price strategy that Pinduoduo is good at, and uses it as a "killer feature" to quickly open up overseas markets. For example, after the launch, temu has launched 30% discount, free shipping, free returns, carousel to win discounts and other activities, not only that, temu also opened the "1 cent pick 1" and free shipping activities, the launch of this series of activities, attracted a large number of consumers. Coincidentally, the fast fashion cross-border brand SHEIN has always adhered to the strategy of "how fast and new province", which is not only new and fast, but also very low, and has won the favor of many consumers.
The continuous growth of the number of users is enough to see the effectiveness of the low-price strategy, and in the face of the menacing "Four Little Tigers", even Amazon, the big brother in the field of cross-border e-commerce, has felt the pressure and lowered the commission to attract merchants and consumers. Specifically, from January 15, 2024, for apparel products priced below $15, the referral fee will be reduced from 17% to 5%; For apparel products priced between $15 and $20, the referral fee will be reduced from 17% to 10%.
2. Fight logistics.
The timeliness of logistics has long become the key for consumers to consider e-commerce platforms. For consumers, the timeliness of logistics is one of the key considerations for their repurchase; For platforms, with the gradual expansion of e-commerce platforms' product categories, their similarity is getting higher and higher, and the dilemma of homogenization is inevitable, and logistics speed can become an important breakthrough for cross-border e-commerce platforms to shape differentiated characteristics. Not only that, but cross-border logistics fulfillment times are already long, and consumers' shopping experience is also vulnerable. Therefore, in order to optimize the shopping experience of overseas consumers and enhance the competitiveness of the platform, cross-border e-commerce platforms have invariably put a lot of effort into the logistics link.
For example, SHEIN has laid out logistics distribution centers in major markets around the world, and in April 2022, SHEIN established its first distribution center in Indiana, USA; In November of the same year, SHEIN opened a distribution center in Toronto, Canada. Last year, Temu also accelerated the implementation of the overseas warehouse plan and started the construction of overseas warehouses, planning to build one in the east and one in the west of the United States. TikTok not only cooperated with local logistics companies in the United States to provide logistics services for sellers by leasing third-party warehouses, but also opened relevant job recruitment in the United States and began to establish logistics and warehousing operation centers.
It is worth mentioning that even AliExpress, a cross-border e-commerce platform with self-built logistics, has not stopped consolidating the construction of logistics infrastructure, but has continuously increased investment in order to bring consumers faster logistics services. Last year, AliExpress cooperated with Cainiao to launch the "Global Five-Day Delivery" international express delivery product; Not long ago, AliExpress and Cainiao announced that they would launch a "super oversized" express line in South Korea, and large furniture and home appliances could be delivered to Korean consumers as soon as 7 days.
3. Spell service.
For e-commerce platforms, the importance of merchants and consumers is self-evident, even for cross-border e-commerce platforms. In order to retain users, cross-border e-commerce also focuses on services.
In the face of consumers, the "Cross-border Four Tigers" not only continued to build logistics infrastructure and continuously improve the shopping experience of users, but also launched a series of activities such as free shipping and returns to solve consumers' worries about online shopping. For example, in March 2023, AliExpress officially launched the Choice channel, where Choice products can enjoy services such as delivery within 3-5 days, free shipping, and free shipping returns. In the face of merchants, SHEIN, Temu, AliExpress and TikTok Shop have successively launched fully managed services to solve the operational problems of some merchants, and at the same time help merchants reduce operating costs and improve efficiency.
Semi-custodial, a new arena for cross-border e-commerce? 2024 has arrived, and in this new year, the cross-border e-commerce industry has not only not calmed down, but has become more and more lively. Among them, "semi-custodial" has become a high-frequency word in the field of cross-border e-commerce. On January 4, AliExpress AliExpress announced the full launch of semi-managed services; Subsequently, Ali International Station also launched a semi-managed service in the field of B2B foreign trade; In late January, Temu also announced that it would launch a semi-managed service. Following "full custody", "semi-custody" has once again become a common choice for cross-border e-commerce platforms.
First, semi-managed has a wider scope of application and can attract more merchants. The so-called full custody means that the merchant only needs to be responsible for the supply, and the subsequent store operation, logistics and warehousing, customer service processing and other links are all responsible for the platform. It can be said that the launch of fully managed services can greatly reduce the threshold for merchants. However, the scope of applicable merchants of the full custody model is relatively limited, and the "all-round players" with product research and development, e-commerce operation and other capabilities are often more willing to operate their own stores and are not willing to be restricted by the platform, so these "all-round players" are not very interested in full custody. In contrast, semi-custody is more flexible, has a wider range of applications, and is easier to attract more merchants to participate in.
Second, merchants need more autonomy, and the semi-custodial model is more suitable for merchants' needs. In the full custody mode, although the problems of operation and logistics timeliness that plague merchants have been solved, the pricing power of goods is also in the hands of the platform, so to speak, the merchant only plays the role of a "supplier". In the semi-managed model, merchants have more options. For example, under AliExpress's semi-managed service, both business and commodity pricing are determined by the merchant independently, and the platform provides merchants with logistics, return and exchange services, which can greatly make up for the shortcomings of merchants and give merchants more autonomy.
In general, cross-border e-commerce is a good opportunity for merchants and e-commerce platforms, which can help expand new increments and achieve sustained growth in performance. With the acceleration of cross-border e-commerce platforms represented by SHEIN, AliExpress, Temu, and TikTok, the entire cross-border e-commerce industry will also undergo new changes. The turbulence in the field of cross-border e-commerce will continue for a long time and will not end in a short period of time.