The global import and export trade reached USD 50.5 trillion in 2022. affected by reverse globalization and the new crown epidemic, the global import and export trade growth rate slowed down to 12.5% in 2022 compared with the previous year, and the development of global import and export trade further slowed down. Catalyzed by the rapid development of digital technology, the global e-commerce penetration rate is expected to reach 20.3% in 2022. 2022 Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, e-commerce retail sales growth rate is expected to be in a double-high trend with mobile e-commerce penetration, e-commerce development prospects are bright.
After years of development of domestic e-commerce, platforms such as Taobao, Jingdong and Pinduoduo have become the head of the e-commerce industry, occupying a large market share and possessing a large number of consumer groups. This leads to the platform and merchant cooperation, the platform side because of the mastery of more resources, larger market, mastery of the right to speak, merchants in the meantime become the weaker party. By the end of 2022, the number of e-tailing platform stores focused on monitoring by Business Big Data reached 24,480,700, up 11.2% year-on-year. The increase in the number of e-commerce platform stores has intensified competition for the same type of products, and merchants' profits have declined. Platform commissions and promotion costs are also known as important expenditures that merchants cannot ignore. The domestic e-commerce dividend period has left us.
It can be seen that going overseas to open up new territories will definitely become the optimal choice for e-commerce practitioners.
The current situation of China's cross-border e-commerce
Customs data show that in 2022, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export of 2.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 9.8% over the previous year. Among them, exports amounted to 1.55 trillion yuan, up 11.7% year-on-year, and imports amounted to 0.56 trillion yuan, up 4.9% year-on-year. Cross-border e-commerce has become an important growth pole for China's import and export trade.
In order to realize the in-depth development of cross-border e-commerce, China's government has introduced a series of supportive policies, including lowering tariffs, simplifying the approval process, and providing financial support. It has further regulated cross-border e-commerce imports through the formulation of the Quality and Safety Supervision Code for Cross-border E-commerce.
Global cross-border e-commerce status
The advantage of cross-border e-commerce is that it can make full use of global market resources, eliminate geographic restrictions through the Internet, expand the scope of sales, lower the threshold of entry into the market, reduce intermediate links and improve efficiency. At the same time, cross-border e-commerce also provides consumers with more choices to buy goods that are difficult to access domestically and enjoy lower prices and better services.
Well-known cross-border e-commerce platforms include Amazon, eBay, Alibaba International Station, Lazada, Shopee and so on. These platforms have attracted a large number of consumers and merchants with their rich commodity categories, extensive brand coverage, convenient shopping experience, and broad consumer market.
1. Amazon merchants increase in operating costs
As the head company in the cross-border e-commerce field, Amazon undergoes a huge change in 2022. Since the incident of the Amazon blocking wave, some big seller accounts have been shut down, giving up a lot of market share, which has been divided by those sellers with top rankings, supply chain advantages and a large number of reviews deposited. Become the main merchants of Amazon profitability and revenue increase. 40% of Amazon sellers achieve positive revenue growth in 2022, 55% of Amazon sellers' profits declined year-on-year. The polarization of Amazon sellers is obvious, and the survival of small and medium-sized Amazon sellers is quite difficult. At the root of this, there are two major reasons, logistics costs and advertising costs.
In 2022, due to repeated domestic epidemics, production and logistics constraints, the Amazon platform has repeatedly raised logistics costs, and the interests of merchants have been significantly compressed.In 2022, 58% of Amazon sellers' logistics fees were higher than those in 2021, and among them, 7% of merchants' logistics costs increased by more than 100%.
Compared with the same period in 2021, in 2022, 76% of Amazon sellers on and off the station of the overall advertising investment rose year-on-year, 13% of sellers flat, only 11% of sellers reduced the overall advertising investment. According to a study released by Outside Media, from 2016 to 2021, Amazon sellers' advertising costs as a percentage of overall costs rose from 1.1% to 4.6%. This means that in just five years, the annual advertising expenditure of Amazon sellers has more than quadrupled.
2. Europe and the United States market constraints
At the same time, U.S. logistics will further increase the implementation of more stringent logistics review of Amazon and other platforms, further increasing the operating capital costs, time costs. For the rapid rise of cross-border e-commerce platforms represented by TikTok, the U.S. government has introduced relevant trade protection policies or other relevant regulations, causing a multi-directional impact on China's cross-border export e-commerce industry, increasing the difficulty of cross-border sellers to export.
European geopolitical conflicts and climatic factors triggered the "de-industrialization" of Europe, the demand for industrial products has dropped significantly, which is not conducive to the expansion of cross-border e-commerce market in Europe.
European CPI index continues to rise, almost labor disputes, a large number of transportation industry employees strike, resulting in part of the distribution business stagnation, reducing distribution efficiency.
European compliance requirements, including VAT, EPR product compliance and product certification compliance requirements are higher, merchants, platforms to develop business in the European market more cautious.
3. New Fertile Ground in Southeast Asia
In 2022, the total population of the six major Southeast Asian countries (Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines) will be about 670 million, one of the largest net population increases in the world. With the exception of Singapore and Thailand, the remaining four countries have more than 50% of their population under the age of 35. The advantage of a youthful demographic dividend will not only provide Southeast Asia with a sufficient labor force, but also inject a strong impetus into the development of Southeast Asia's Internet economy, especially in the field of e-commerce.
During the three years from 2019 to 2022, the number of Internet users in Southeast Asia increased by 100 million, with a sizable overall growth rate.The e-commerce GMV of the Southeast Asian market in 2022 was $131 billion. Among them, Indonesia is the largest e-commerce market. Vietnam's compound annual growth rate of more than 30%, is expected to exceed Thailand to become the second largest e-commerce market in Southeast Asia. In addition to Singapore, five Southeast Asian countries in 2022, the growth rate of e-commerce scale ranked in the world's top eight, along with Latin America as the fastest growing region.
Southeast Asian e-commerce to form Shopee, Lazada, Tiki and other diversified competition, did not produce an absolute head player, to TikTok Shop as a representative of the emerging social e-commerce platform is also stationed in Southeast Asia. The market pattern has not yet been finalized, and it is not yet known which platform will become the ultimate winner.
After the full entry into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the tariffs on trade in goods between China and the Southeast Asian market will be further reduced, and the traffic advantage of social media can drive the local e-commerce conversion rate, but cross-border sellers to open a local store is more difficult, and the relatively high cost of logistics and distribution will extrude the profit margins, which will constrain the rapid development of the Southeast Asian market, and along with the continued optimization of the e-commerce ecosystem, its real difficulties are expected to gradually optimize the e-commerce environment. Optimization of the e-commerce ecosystem in the future, the reality of its plight is expected to be gradually alleviated.
