What are the b2c transaction costs?

B2C e-commerce greatly reduces transaction links and costs. B2C e-commerce can reduce unnecessary cost factors, mainly including aging cost, storage cost, market research cost, advertising promotion cost, shopping mall occupation cost, sales staff salary and multi-level middlemen (such as agents, wholesalers and retailers) to increase prices.

1.2 cost item increase

The increase of B2C e-commerce cost items includes: logistics cost, customer waiting time cost and website cost.

1.2. 1 logistics cost

The increase of logistics cost includes forward logistics cost and reverse logistics cost. Forward logistics cost refers to the sum of manpower, financial resources and material resources spent on physical activities such as packaging, loading and unloading, transportation, warehousing, distribution processing, logistics information and distribution of goods. Because B2C e-commerce needs to distribute goods to widely distributed customers, it will increase the setup cost, management cost and forward logistics cost of distribution centers. In this paper, reverse logistics cost refers to the maintenance and return cost of unqualified goods, as well as the physical flow of goods formed by returning reusable packaging containers from buyers to suppliers.

1.2.2 Time cost and mental cost of customers

Customers must wait for the transportation time of goods, which is the waiting time cost of customers. In the case of retail business, customers basically don't care about the cost of shopping time, but in the era of e-commerce, the longer it takes, the greater the time cost, and the greater the possibility of customers giving up consumption.

1.2.3 website fee

Including information technology infrastructure costs, website design costs, website operation costs, and driving users online costs. This is the new cost after adopting B2C e-commerce.

2 logistics model and cost analysis

At present, China's B2C e-commerce enterprises have different logistics systems and business models, which are roughly as follows:

2. 1 Self-operated logistics mode

From the specific situation of enterprises in China, many B2C enterprises have established their own distribution channels after years of nationwide operation. Self-operated logistics distribution system has many cost advantages:

2. 1. 1 Reduce capital occupation

Self-operated logistics distribution system can enhance the liquidity of funds and reduce the cost of funds. If the outsourced third-party logistics company can't settle accounts on the same day, it will bring great pressure to B2C enterprises with high capital occupation.

2. 1.2 Enhance the controllability of logistics costs

Self-operated logistics distribution system can enable enterprises to improve the utilization rate of each link, realize cost saving and increase the controllability of logistics costs. For example, we can train the delivery staff on related products, introduce simple products to customers at the same time of delivery, distribute the latest product catalogues and brochures, and install products that need to be installed for customers. It saves a lot of money, but it is difficult for third-party logistics to do this. Even if it can be done, it will increase a lot of money accordingly.

2. 1.3 Reduce the cost of reverse logistics

Self-operated logistics distribution system can effectively establish B2C brand. By unifying clothing, standardizing language, improving timeliness, improving user experience, reducing customers' time cost and spiritual cost, and reducing the return brought by logistics services, the cost of reverse logistics can be reduced. Although self-operated logistics has many advantages, the current situation of self-operated logistics in China is obviously not optimistic. According to the statistics of table 1, the self-operated logistics coverage areas of several major B2C e-commerce companies range from 4 cities to 24 cities, and most of them are concentrated in first-tier cities. However, the demand from second-and third-tier cities is increasing gradually, and the current scale of self-operated logistics obviously cannot meet the demand, so it is necessary to further develop cooperation with third-party logistics.

2.2 Third-party logistics model

In China, most B2C enterprises are small in scale and limited in economic strength, and do not have the ability to build self-operated logistics. At the same time, the consumer market faced by B2C enterprises is generally small and scattered, and the cost of adopting self-delivery is often high, which is unbearable for enterprises. Even self-operated B2C enterprises should cooperate with third-party logistics when they are involved in large areas such as second-and third-tier cities. Third-party logistics has the following cost advantages:

Reduce storage costs

Third-party logistics can enable B2C enterprises to minimize inventory, or even achieve zero inventory, while effectively ensuring supply and reducing storage costs.

2.2.2 Economies of scale and scope

As a specialized socialized logistics organization, the highly systematic, integrated and information-based management system of third-party logistics, its own capital accumulation and agglomeration capacity, and the huge scale of logistics network coverage make it have strong economies of scale.

The scope economy of third-party logistics enterprises shows that when third-party logistics enterprises provide logistics services for more than one type of enterprises with the same resources (or the same amount of resources), the horizontal expansion of service scope will bring cost savings.

Reduction of transaction costs

Many B2C enterprises have more than one logistics service provider, but with the expansion of enterprise logistics scale, it is more difficult to transfer and coordinate information among members of logistics system, which makes the transaction cost between enterprises increase. After the adoption of third-party logistics, enterprises have changed from one-to-many relationship directly facing multiple customers to one-to-one relationship directly facing third-party logistics, thus reducing transaction costs.

2.3 Network plus physical chain business model

Among the measures taken by the Ministry of Commerce to promote the development of e-commerce, promoting the combination of physical market and online market will become one of the key points in the future. It can be seen that the combination of network and entity is the future development trend of B2C enterprises. Enterprises can build their own chain stores or cooperate with existing chain stores. This model relies on the widely distributed commercial network of traditional chain stores to directly carry out commodity sales, logistics distribution and sales services. Chain stores can provide practical support for online virtual shopping malls. People can order goods through the online platform of B2C enterprises, pick up goods from nearby chain stores or deliver them to their homes, which can easily and time-saving complete the shopping process and enjoy complete and fast sales service.