In the foreign trade market, enterprises promote their own goods and services through information channels to attract foreign merchants, thus expanding overseas markets. Therefore, from the perspective of communication, foreign trade belongs to information flow.

From the perspective of cross-border platforms, merchants directly publish commodity information through platforms or self-built stations to complete commodity transactions. From this perspective, cross-border e-commerce takes the flow of goods.

2. Different import and export links:

In the foreign trade market, because they are all commodities, time cost enterprises will not obviously consider optimization in import and export links and other places.

In cross-border e-commerce, both transportation time and cost will affect the final transaction and profit of goods, so merchants should compliment these links, try to reduce costs and improve efficiency as much as possible.

3. Online trading and offline trading have different trading methods:

In foreign trade, the double delivery transaction mode is offline, or the transaction is not connected to the third-party payment platform.

In cross-border e-commerce, both parties and transaction methods are generated by platforms, and payment also requires the intervention of third-party payment platforms.

4. Different taxes:

Because foreign trade often involves large-value transactions, it is more complicated to declare taxes during customs examination, which involves not only value-added tax but also consumption tax.

Cross-border electronic commerce, as a business-to-person transaction, is simpler in taxation. Sometimes you may only be involved in a postal tax.

5. Different business models:

The basic mode of foreign trade is B2B direction, which is the product of the primary stage of global trade development.

The mainstream trade model of cross-border e-commerce is B2C, which is the inevitable result of global trade development. Cross-border e-commerce has broken the operation mode of traditional foreign trade e-commerce, but now the boundary between cross-border e-commerce and foreign trade is becoming increasingly blurred.