Cross-Border E-Commerce: A New Driver of Global Trade

Hierarchical value-attainment paths of CBEC consumers: a means-end-chain perspective

“…Previous studies mentioned that one of the major hurdles to widespread acceptance of CBEC is language and culture barriers emerging as a result of transactions taking place between parties over a long distance. These barriers are much more prominent in the case of CBEC compared to domestic e-commerce (Gessner and Snodgrass, 2015; Gomez-Herrera et al , 2014; Tu and Shangguan, 2018). Language and communication become more potent issues when people from different parts of the world enter into a business transaction over the Internet.…”

“…Due to the problem of a lack of means of verifying the authenticity and origin of products in online shopping environments, the illegal use of bogus trademarks that are similar to, or considerably indistinguishable from, registered trademarks (Jennings, 1989) has emerged as a major risk and quality issue. Because of different regulations, quality checks and complex return processes, counterfeiting is an even greater concern for CBEC customers (Tu and Shangguan, 2018). It is not surprising that CBEC customers prefer CBEC marketplaces or business-to-customer (B2C) platforms that keep a sharp eye out for fake or counterfeit products, have installed stringent anticounterfeiting controls and have other quality checks resulting in authentic products (Lin et al , 2018).…”

“…Thus, CBEC has an obvious edge in the global business environment in the information age. However, compared with traditional domestic e-commerce, CBEC usually has a more complex shopping process, higher shopping cost and risks, such as language obstacles (Gomez-Herrera et al , 2014), higher time cost, limited transparency on delivery, extra payment for customs duty (Zhang et al , 2016), a complex and ambiguous return process (Tu and Shangguan, 2018) and international payment risks (Gomez-Herrera et al , 2014; Zhenhua and Qiang, 2015). In the wake of these additional risks and complexities, it has become imperative for CBEC companies to not only understand what customers really value while consuming through CBEC but also the mechanism and origins of these values and then provide this set of customer values comprehensively.…”

“…A considerable portion of e-commerce transactions involve trading parties from different customs territories, a phenomenon now referred to as cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) (Wang, 2018). According to Ali Research (Ali Research, 2016), CBEC refers to any electronic foreign trade in which products are exported from one country and imported in another through a display, negotiation and transaction over the Internet (Tu and Shangguan, 2018). Due to the encouraging e-commerce policies and infrastructure in China, complemented by fast-developing logistic, financial and marketing strategies, the CBEC industry has demonstrated stable and rapid development (Ma et al , 2018).…”

“…CBEC differs from traditional foreign trade and domestic e-commerce in many ways. First, traditional import and export usually do not involve consumers, whereas in CBEC consumers are directly involved (Tu and Shangguan, 2018). Thus, CBEC creates shorter channels between sellers and buyers.…”