Recent data released by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) showed that China’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports amounted to RMB 2.38 trillion in 2023, up 15.6% year-on-year. Among them, exports amounted to 1.83 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.6%. This data reveals some new changes in China’s foreign trade. Among them, cross-border live with goods and other digital foreign trade methods are becoming an important way for some foreign trade enterprises to obtain orders and promote the brand “out to sea”. Industry insiders believe that cross-border live streaming with goods and other new forms of foreign trade development, to promote China’s foreign trade to maintain stable and improve the quality of development has a positive significance.
The rapid development of cross-border live cargo, thanks to the continuous promotion of China’s e-commerce platform. Data provided by Alibaba International Station shows that since 2023, the number of overseas buyers watching cross-border live streaming online every day has increased by 127% year-on-year, and the business opportunities for foreign trade merchants have grown by 156%. Since its launch in September 2022, the Temu platform has opened operations in more than 40 countries, covering five continents, and many Chinese manufacturers have sold their goods to the European and U.S. markets through cross-border live streaming, according to data provided by Tiktok. Chinese fast-fashion e-commerce platform Xiyin has always been at the top of the list of overseas “shopping app” downloads, and marketing methods such as live streaming have become an important way to promote and attract traffic on overseas social platforms.
Benefit from China’s strong supply chain
China’s strong cross-border live streaming ability to bring goods has triggered the attention of some foreign media. Nihon Keizai Shimbun recently reported that Chinese e-commerce platform Temu had more than 15 million users in Japan in January this year. The e-commerce company has been in Japan for about six months and has already reached more than 50% of the average of the leading three e-commerce companies in Japan. Also according to Yonhap News Agency, the latest data recently released by South Korea’s statistics department showed that South Korea’s imports originating from China’s cross-border e-commerce surged 121.2 percent year-on-year in 2023. For the first time, China surpassed the U.S. to become South Korea’s largest source of cross-border e-commerce imports.
At the same time, Amazon, Walmart, You rabbit, Facebook, photo wall and other overseas shopping and social platforms have “test water” live with goods. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Financial and Strategic Studies previously released the “global cross-border e-commerce brand overseas ecological report” that, whether in China or overseas, live has become the current flow of new wind mouth. Live with goods is a strong interactive shopping, restore the offline face-to-face shopping experience, some cross-border e-commerce brands keenly aimed at this brand “overseas” marketing new direction.
Why is China’s live streaming model successful? The U.S. “MIT Sloan Management Review” magazine has published an article analyzing, from a global perspective, in addition to China’s major e-commerce platforms other than the operating model is relatively single, modular, and China’s e-commerce platforms in the live with goods will also be interspersed with the game, in order to entertain and enhance the potential consumer’s willingness to buy. In addition, China’s live streaming has spawned a large number of netroots anchor groups to cooperate with relevant e-commerce platforms, which promotes the innovation of e-commerce retail marketing model. These live-streaming with goods anchors are not only professional hosts who can interact and empathize with their audiences in real time, but also sales masters who know the products, understand the products, and are able to make the products understandable. The article argues that as a new model of global e-commerce retailing, China’s live-streaming with goods model can be recognized, borrowed and tried by e-commerce platforms and brands in various countries.
The fire of China’s cross-border live with goods, mainly benefited from China’s strong supply chain, excellent quality of goods, responsive to market demand, attractive to consumers, etc., these advantages through the cross-border live show very well. With the live with goods “out to sea”, high logistics costs, cumbersome payment procedures, cultural differences and other issues are also highlighted. China Information Association executive director, founding president of the National Research Institute of New Economy Zhu Li suggested to further increase investment in infrastructure construction, improve the efficiency of customs clearance, optimize logistics, information flow channels, reduce the operating costs of enterprises, live cross-border e-commerce to provide strong support for the development of live; the establishment of a perfect overseas warehouse service system, to promote the optimization of the entire supply chain and the development of the school and enterprise cooperation, the establishment of a perfect cross-border e-commerce live! Talent training system.