In the third year after the outbreak of COVID-19, China as a big consumer country with a population of 1.4 billion, is still favored by tens of thousands of brands around the world relying on its own demographic dividend and economic size. China’s rapidly developing digital technology and constantly increasing e-commerce platforms have integrated e-commerce more deeply into consumers’ daily lives, making consumption simpler, choices richer, and reaching intensive consumption links with goods from all over the world.
For overseas merchants or brands, how to quickly access the consumer market with a population of 1.4 billion, so as to successfully sell goods to China, has become an urgent strategic demand, and is also a profit growth point that business departments pay close attention to.
But there is often an extremely complex cross-border business system behind the digital exchange. In the face of China that a country with strict access requirements in the world, whether merchants or brands, it is often unable to achieve a truly smooth and efficient new breakthrough in cross-border e-commerce by relying on their own strength due to insufficient technical capabilities in the fields of access payment, logistics and customs clearance, as well as gaps in laws and regulations.
We will provide you with some clear cross-border e-commerce key points and strategic suggestions based on the practical experience of MyMyPanda CBEC platform in China.
1. Why is China's cross-border e-commerce a new huge market?
Because of well-known reasons, the 1.4 billion population dividend has built an extremely deep consumer base for China. With the increase of income level, the size of the middle class and the wealthy class has increased, and consumers in third and fourth tier cities have gradually increased their preference for overseas brands. For a long time, cross-border e-commerce has only stayed in relatively advanced regions or wealthy classes:
1) Purchasing cross-border commodities requires corresponding knowledge or channels.
2) When placing an order to buy goods, you cannot choose the payment method (WeChat or Alipay, etc.) that Chinese consumers are accustomed to, but you must have a credit card or account that can pay overseas.
3) The cross-border logistics has a long time effect, causing consumers in remote areas to be troubled by the arrival time of more than 4 weeks.
4) Cross border goods are not on the white list of the Chinese customs, and there is a risk of tax payment or return.
5) The brand or enterprise lacks channels for brand promotion and mental education.
Therefore, many Chinese consumers choose to enter the gray channel, namely “人肉代购”. The advantage is that they do not have to participate in the complex purchase process. The disadvantage is that the authenticity of the goods cannot be identified, and there is also the risk of being supervised and taxed.
However, the demand of Chinese consumers for high-quality goods has been growing, such as high-end cosmetics, luxury goods, watches, jewelry and handbags. The annual turnover through gray channels is amazing, but the poor experience and after-sales also bring many problems.
The Chinese government has also noticed this, so it has introduced a more open cross-border e-commerce policy. As long as brands or enterprises can cooperate with compliance requirements, they can enjoy more preferential tax policies and customs clearance support.
This decision provides brand or enterprise with new opportunities to realize real cross-border e-commerce business, and also opens the door to new business.
2. What is China cross-border e-commerce?
China cross-border e-commerce refers to a brand or company that hopes to sell goods in China. By opening an account on the Chinese e-commerce platform or building a brand independent online platform in China, Chinese consumers can buy cross-border goods in the same way as ordinary e-commerce consumption without more operations. However, there is a key point that the brand or company needs to have a Chinese entity to provide legal qualifications and handle relevant affairs.
With the emergence of China’s cross-border e-commerce platforms (Tmall Global/JD International, etc.), overseas brands can sell their overseas goods on the platform after passing the qualification review of the cross-border platform, but this also means that they need to accept the platform’s charging standards and strategy management, which often means paying higher commissions and bearing higher costs.
When the Chinese government throws out the olive branch of cross-border policy, overseas brands or companies have the opportunity to build a real cross-border e-commerce channel from their own official website to Chinese consumers, achieve the best payment and logistics experience at a very low cost, and directly deliver goods to Chinese customers, without the need to establish a local Chinese company or rely on a third-party platform. This is MyMyPanda CBEC platform.
3. What is MyMyPanda CBEC platform?
After some overseas brands have landed in Chinese Mainland and launched e-commerce business, we will find that they no longer enjoy the price advantage of cross-border goods; When they join the China cross-border e-commerce platform, they often show that the brand and the commercial nature cannot be unified, and the marketing model is single, and the profits cannot be improved. This is not the best solution for overseas brands or companies.
MyMyPanda CBEC platform – on the basis of maintaining the brand or the company’s original e-commerce platform, adopts the method of direct connection with China Customs / cross-border payment / cross-border logistics to provide the payment methods used by Chinese consumers, meet the commodity compliance, enjoy the rights of early customs clearance, and provide fast logistics in Chinese Mainland or faster bonded warehouse distribution.
Chinese consumers can experience the same cost-effective, digital payment and real-time logistics services as the Chinese e-commerce platform in the brand overseas official website. At the same time, it will combine the mainstream digital marketing mode in China to provide the brand with omni channel cross-border e-commerce services.
Therefore, we will regard MyMyPanda CBEC platform as the most competitive new model at present.
4. Omni channel marketing mode of MyMyPanda CBEC.
When Chinese consumers are “planting grass” by cross-border goods exposed in Xiaohongshu/Weibo/WeChat, it is an important exposure of brands or enterprises to the Chinese market.
Compared with conventional cross-border e-commerce business, consumers in the Chinese market are more likely to be influenced by KOL to generate cross-border shopping demand. How can tens of thousands of overseas brands find the goods they need or are interested in? The value delivered by KOL is more likely to impress consumers.
Therefore, when brands or enterprises choose the MyMyPanda CBEC model, what they need is not only to wait for potential customers to place orders on the official website, but also to plant the seed of “demand” in the Chinese market, so that target customers can improve their brand popularity through constant imperceptible influence, and finally achieve the consumption transformation of cross-border e-commerce.
Based on the deep foundation of digital marketing, MyMyPanda can build an omni channel digital marketing matrix for brands or enterprises. While realizing new cross-border e-commerce, it will put market cultivation and brand promotion into China’s most popular We Media platforms and channels to help brands or enterprises complete the cycle of “planting grass” – “transformation” – “cross-border”.
In our view, the fierce competition in China’s cross-border e-commerce industry is unfolding. With the more preferential cross-border tax policy and MyMyPanda CBEC strategy, overseas brands and enterprises will usher in a faster development of China’s cross-border e-commerce business, bringing more consumer experience and brand value to the huge Chinese consumer group.
