2021 Research Report on China’s Emerging Cross-Border B2B Export E-Commerce Industry

Foreign trade B2B e-commerce market analysis

Cross-border e-commerce platforms increase marketing intelligence and social capability building

Cross-border e-commerce platforms increase the intelligence and refinement of marketing to enhance the accuracy and timeliness of marketing and fully tap the commercial value of consumers throughout their life cycles. At the same time, cross-border e-commerce platforms actively use social marketing channels to promote marketing socialization capability building. On the one hand, according to eMarketer data, the proportion of traffic contributed by social media and search engines to e-commerce platforms has increased year by year, from 4.7% in Q1 2017 to 9.1% in Q1 2019. On the other hand, social media continues to lay out its e-commerce business, and has released e-commerce functions that can complete shopping on the site.

Downstream small B retailers have more diversified and differentiated needs and urgently need platform empowerment.

As new cross-border e-commerce has lowered the threshold for foreign trade, cross-border B2B purchasing groups have become more diversified, and third-level distributors or retailers have begun to bypass higher-level buyers and purchase goods directly from the country through the platform. Compared with Big B buyers, Small B retailers have weaker capabilities and greater differentiation in all aspects, and their demand focuses are also different. For example, KOLs on traffic platforms need one-stop basic functional services for a small scale pilot and do not have excessive requirements for the supply chain; while professional online sellers with certain experience pay more attention to a competitive supply chain and better prices. Facing these emerging groups in the market and their more complex and diverse needs, there is an urgent need for platforms to provide supporting solutions.

Online customer acquisition channels are becoming increasingly fragmented, and the traffic aggregation capabilities of decentralized channels continue to be highlighted.

In 2020, the global distribution market is expected to be US$149.4 billion. With the explosion of personalized fragmented transactions and compound trade models, the compound growth rate from 2020 to 2025 is expected to reach 30.1%. Online customer acquisition channels are becoming increasingly fragmented, and the traffic aggregation capabilities of decentralized channels continue to be highlighted. Therefore, the decentralization of traffic will bring about the reshaping of the cross-border export e-commerce industry structure. Cross-border export e-commerce companies continue to pay attention to the construction and marketing of "private traffic". The construction of "private traffic" is conducive to attracting new customers and cultivating trust in new customers. The marketing of "private traffic" is conducive to the refined operation of existing users and guides repeat purchases and recommendations from old customers. It can be seen that cross-border export e-commerce companies that are actively deploying and deeply cultivating decentralized traffic channels are conducive to seizing development opportunities and enhancing their industry status.

The new cross-border export ecological B2B e-commerce platform effectively solves the supply chain and operational problems of downstream distributors

The procurement process for downstream distributors/retailers is complex, takes a long time, and has low bargaining power. In the absence of support from data analysis of overseas consumer trends and direct connection with domestic brand resources, downstream merchants have weak control over the entire service process and supply chain. When new cross-border export e-commerce provides solutions to the operational pain points of downstream distributors/retailers, it also increases its dependence on cross-border e-commerce.

Analysis of new cross-border export B2B ecological platform

Ecological platform: resource integration and sharing, accelerating industrial integration and prosperity

The basic function of an ecological platform is to facilitate transactions, but on the basis of providing commodity information, advertising and online transaction services to both supply and demand parties, it also integrates more related industries other than transaction services, such as warehousing and logistics, promotional marketing, supply chain finance and other value-added innovative services into platform-centered trading activities. For the industry, the surface value of the integration of supporting services is that the platform provides one-stop services for suppliers, shortens the trade chain, simplifies trade links, and improves trade efficiency. The deep value is that the integration of services brings about the opening up and reuse of data in multiple links, which in turn leads to the structural upgrade of the industry. As a resource integrator and central hub, the platform has achieved an irreplaceable status. The embedding of supporting services into the platform has also highlighted the importance of service providers who were originally on the periphery of the industrial chain and achieved cross-stage business growth.

Based on the platform matching supply and demand resources, the service market has high growth space

The service market other than transactions in the ecological platform shows faster growth and higher market space. For example, the proportion of value-added service revenue of the ecological platform Dunhuang Network has continued to rise in recent years. In 2019, the total market size of China's cross-border export B2B e-commerce service providers reached 539.1 billion yuan, and the scale of service providers based on B2B e-commerce online transactions reached 62.1 billion yuan. It is expected that the compound growth rate of the cross-border B2B service market will reach 27.0% from 2020 to 2025, and the compound growth rate of service revenue brought by online transactions will be as high as 49.2%. There are three reasons behind this: 1) The rapid growth of cross-border export B2B e-commerce transactions; 2) Export sellers’ increased awareness of the value of e-commerce services; 3) The transformation of service providers’ business structures has brought about increments. For example, logistics companies are transforming into supply chain services, and payment companies are transforming into cross-border financial integration service providers, etc., driving the development of value-added services on ecological platforms.

Ecological platforms are conducive to promoting industry transparency, specialization, and connectivity, allowing ecological members to benefit from each other.

Based on the open ecology, participants with originally weak correlations can realize industry chain integration and user circle expansion across borders. The open ecology can promote the transparency, specialization, and connectivity of the entire industry, allowing the platform to achieve an exponential growth curve.

With the platform as the core, ecological synergy is achieved through internal and external collaboration.

With the platform as the core, each business group within the platform connects upstream and downstream and third-party service providers on the one hand, and on the other hand conducts business integration and data sharing between business groups. Through internal and external collaboration and cross-scenario collaboration, the platform links and empowers all links and participants in the ecosystem to jointly achieve cost reduction, efficiency increase, and business growth.

The ecological platform can realize technology integration and scene penetration, and can promote industrial intelligence and diversification.

The ecological platform provides a wealth of application scenarios for emerging technologies. After big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, Internet of Things/sensors, 5G and other technologies are fully integrated, the ecological platform can be used to accelerate the penetration and iteration of various industrial chain links. While testing the feasibility of scenarios and verifying commercial value, it has also developed the development characteristics of industrial Internet forms such as interconnection, diffusion, and external stimulation.

Future development trends of the industry

The trend of mainstream e-commerce platforms turning to ecological platforms is clear

The ecological platform effectively penetrates and integrates cross-border logistics, credit management, and e-commerce operation services. Ultimately, through the systematic transformation of new generation technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, it promotes multi-stream integration and multi-stream collaboration, and achieves ecological collaboration across the entire industry chain. There is a clear trend of mainstream e-commerce platforms in the industry turning to ecological platforms. Ecological platforms have diverse participants and healthy distribution relationships. Ecological platforms cooperate through multi-dimensional and multi-role cooperation to achieve resource sharing and interconnection with all parties in the ecosystem, and constantly improve the cross-border e-commerce ecosystem.

Cross-border e-commerce with strong ability to integrate online and offline dual channel resources has greater growth potential

The advantage of cross-border e-commerce online channels is that it can promote products quickly and has wide penetration, which can better attract foreign buyers. The core advantage of offline channels is that it is more conducive to improving the experience of foreign buyers and establishing transaction trust, and promoting online orders. As competition among cross-border e-commerce online channels intensifies, cross-border e-commerce that actively integrates the advantages of offline and online channel resources in foreign trade business and develops collaboratively will help increase its growth.

Foreign trade companies should closely follow foreign demand, quickly adjust marketing strategies, adapt to the development of the external environment, conduct more refined operations for online marketing, improve efficiency, and learn high-quality online marketing methods. If you want to know more, please contact 17721188551 (mobile phone number is the same as WeChat) for consultation. We will arrange for you an experienced customer success manager to provide one-on-one foreign trade marketing consultation. Singoo, let China's manufacturing go global better!