The global e-commerce industry is the fastest growing channel for commercial transactions owing to the increasing internet and smartphone penetration all over the world. The ongoing digital transformation, especially in the developing economies is the major growth factor for the global e-commerce activities. Talking about India, for an instance, the total internet user base of the country, which was nearly 560 million in September 2018, was anticipated to increase to 829 million by 2021 (as sourced by the India Brand Equity Foundation). However, these projections seem to get affected by the outbreak of coronavirus all across the globe. The nationwide lockdown in various countries and the quarantine scenarios have definitely surpassed the current estimations.
This is also seen in collaboration with the dependence on e-commerce sites for even the day to day commodities such as groceries due to practicing of social distancing and avoidance of going to the grocery stores and malls all across the world. Thus, all these factors are expected to provide a boost to the global e-commerce industry. But, in this thread the cross-border sales are witnessing a severe downfall due to the ban in support of preventing the virus transmission. Going back to the 2017 estimations of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), they revealed the cross-border business-to-consumer (B2C) sales reaching an estimated $412 billion, comprising approximately 11% of the total B2C e-commerce. On comparing it to the previous year, i.e., 2016, it recorded a hike of 4%.
The top ten merchandize exporting countries for global B2C sales include the US, China, UK, Japan, and Germany. Rising preference for foreign brands and low cost of products outside one’s own country are the major factor positively influencing the growth of cross-border e-commerce sales. Pre COVID-19, the European Commission was facilitating cross-border e-commerce, primarily for SMEs, with harmonized consumer and contract rules and with more efficient and affordable parcel delivery. Such kinds of favorable government initiatives are encouraging cross-border e-commerce and thereby leads to the adoption of e-commerce logistics that supports e-commerce companies to offer their services more rapidly and efficiently to the end-consumers. However, the current scenarios will impede their market growth due to the ban on cross border sales.
Even for a while, to keep COVID-19 aside, it becomes too complex for sellers to meet the global customers’ demand in terms of ‘on-time delivery at an expected cost’. This, in turn, increases the demand for international logistics service providers to cut trade barriers and leverage the flow of products to their customers. Thus, several logistics firms offer cross-border logistics services. FedEx Cross Border, for instance, provides cross-border logistics solutions such as duty calculations, package tracking, international shipping costs, and currency conversion calculations. The offerings of FedEx Cross Border strategically fit into the global portfolio of FedEx Corp. by allowing the company to assist retailers and e-tailers reach global e-commerce customers.
It shows that logistics service providers were significantly focusing on cross-border e-commerce customers to extend the reach of their services; however, the advent of corona in between has disturbed the global trade chemistry. Despite these challenges, FedEx Cross Border has come to the global support and thus, gave the following statement on 20th of March 2020:
“Work and travel restrictions may affect shipments inbound and outbound to and from impacted areas, as well as shipments moving within those areas. Customers can visit fedex.com or tnt.com to check the status of their shipments.”
