By:Bidyut B. Hazarika, Western Michigan University, USA
Reza Mousavi, Western Michigan University, USA

The emergence of cross-border e-commerce (CBeC) has brought substantial changes to both businesses and consumers. Although CBeC businesses have existed for less than a decade, many academic researchers addressed important issues in this context. It is essential to evaluate what has been studied through a structured review of the literature and derive meaningful insights given that research on this topic is new and largely fragmented. Therefore, this study conducts a review of CBeC literature to find the current gaps and fragmentation to provide guidelines for future research. The review shows that research in this domain needs more attention and enforcement to address the current research gaps. Addressing the current gaps helps academia build a rigorous body of knowledge and enables practitioners to solve challenging business problems.

Cross-border e-commerce (CBeC) refers to an electronic business model where the customers and sellers are located in different countries or territories. Although trading activities are conducted on an online platform similar to traditional e-commerce platforms, there are several differences between CBeC and traditional e-commerce (Hsiao et al., 2017). These differences are in logistics, customs regulations, cybersecurity, customer relationship management, and payments. The volume of CBeC transactions has increased significantly in recent years. It is expected that by 2025, the annual global revenues from CBeC would increase to 250 to 350 billion dollars (Valarezo et al., 2018). Online buyers worldwide are motivated by price advantage and diverse offerings to make purchases across borders. Although CBeC is growing rapidly worldwide, countries such as China and countries in the European Union (EU) are experiencing much faster growth than others. However, CBeC is complicated and risky because of the lack of legal enforcement across countries, cultural and language barriers, high information asymmetry, and high shipping cost (L. Wang et al., 2015). CBeC customers are different from traditional e-commerce customers due to differences in culture, language, habits, and expectations (T. Y. Kim et al., 2017). Despite these differences, an increased number of people use cross-border commerce because of the variety of benefits provided by CBeC (Valarezo et al., 2018). To shed light on CBeC as an emerging e-business, many researchers explore this type of e-commerce from different angles.

Keywords:Barriers, Buyer Behavior, Cross-Border E-Commerce, Culture, Drivers,Framework, Literature Review, Trust

Cross-Border E-Commerce and Directions for Future Research.pdf