China is one of the biggest players in cross-border e-commerce, the practice of purchasing something outside of the merchant’s home country. In the Netherlands, one of the most well known examples is Aliexpress. Famous for their cheap products, many customers order products from Aliexpress. The products are shipped from China or warehouses in other faraway countries, despite the cheap price and shipping costs.
We live in the age of information technology and internet; therefore cross-border e-commerce is developing at an unstoppable pace. According to the AI Media Consulting group, the overall transaction scale reached 7.6 trillion RMB (more than 960 billion EUR) and 9 trillion RMB (more than 1.14 trillion EUR) in 2017 and 2018 respectively. By 2020, the market is expected to reach a transaction scale of 12 trillion RMB. China has always been a driving force in this market, with big data being one of the main forces behind this development.
Big data is used to analyze consumer behavior and to predict consumer spending. As a result, Chinese companies are able to offer customized services and increase the value they offer to consumers. The impressive thing is that this is executed on a global scale.
The direct advantages for Chinese companies are pretty evident. However, it’s also noteworthy that cross border e-commerce has a huge impact on the Chinese e-commerce market. The two are directly intertwined. Apart from an increase in growth stimulation in the Chinese economy, companies are able to efficiently control their supply side. As their target market grows, big data has become a necessity to streamline the logistics and production involved.
