Qualitative Analysis of Cross-Border E-Commerce Based on Transaction Costs Theory

Abstract

Cross-border e-commerce is a newly arising and burgeoning model of cross-border trade. This paper qualitatively analyzes the reasons of cross-border e-commerce's emerging based on transaction costs theory. First, we introduce cross-border e-commerce and describe the supply chains of B2C and B2B2C cross-border e-commerce models. Then we give an overview of the development of transaction costs theory and analyze the composition of transaction costs from four different perspectives. Finally, we compare the transaction costs of three main cross-border e-commerce models to traditional cross-border trade based on the work above and draw a conclusion that the decrease of transaction costs is a fundamental cause of its development.