Alibaba International Station demonstrates the application of AI in foreign trade for the first time: Merchant efficiency is greatly improved

At present, new technologies such as AI are surging, but what is the prospect of their application in specific industrial scenarios? At the " 2023 SME Digital Foreign Trade Summit Forum " held in Shenzhen on August 9 , Alibaba International Station fully demonstrated the application of new technologies in foreign trade scenarios for the first time.

According to the demonstration by Lin Hao, the head of merchant products at Alibaba International Station, Alibaba International Station is undergoing intelligent upgrades in all aspects of foreign trade, from the most basic product release to marketing conversion, customer reception, enterprise management, etc. It is reported that the introduction of new technologies will greatly improve the operating efficiency of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises, and will make B2B digital foreign trade the simplest and most convenient overseas model for small and medium-sized enterprises.

(Photo: 2023 SME Digital Foreign Trade Summit )

Taking the most routine product delivery operation of foreign trade merchants as an example, the average merchant releases 31 new products per day , and the average release time of each single product is more than 10 minutes . In this way, it takes five or six hours a day to release products, and a lot of costs for shooting and art are also invested. Lin Hao introduced that the merchant assistant, which is expected to be launched in September, will provide merchants with functions such as title optimization, image processing, text translation, and video processing in the product release link.

According to the on-site demonstration, the reporter found that in the future, on the merchant workbench of Alibaba International Station, you only need to upload a product picture to generate a white background picture or scene picture with one click. In terms of video, merchants only need to provide a basic version of the video, and wait for a while to generate a video with added selling point subtitles and intelligent voice explanation.

At the scene, a video of a wig product that was only accompanied by pure music was automatically equipped with accurate selling point subtitles after AI video processing, and fluent voice explanations were also generated.

"With the support of new technologies, now is the best time to engage in digital foreign trade." Lin Hao believes that every technological change will create new opportunities, and now is undoubtedly the best time to enter the digital foreign trade track.

(Photo: Digital Foreign Trade Experience Area of ​​the "2023 SME Digital Foreign Trade Summit Forum")

In fact, the proportion of small and medium-sized enterprises that have started B2B digital foreign trade on Alibaba International Station has increased significantly this year. Many of them are start-ups, domestic trade to foreign trade, or offline to online. In the past, it was not easy for them to catch up with those experienced old foreign trade companies, but now new technologies such as AI have provided them with an accelerator and even an opportunity to overtake them.

Fang Zefu, the founder of Miancheng Technology , a Shenzhen consumer electronics merchant with 100% of its business on Alibaba International Station, has deep feelings about this : " It would be difficult to start a business offline if you start from scratch. We were just two people with 100,000 yuan and started from a small office of more than 10 square meters . Until now, we have maintained a light asset model. We only take orders online and then do business, with zero inventory and very healthy cash flow. "

Even though the offline consumer electronics industry was hit by high inventory pressure overseas in 2022 , Miancheng Technology still maintained a five or six times growth rate in the e-sports category.

In recent years, Fang Zefu has also found that the purchasing habits of many foreign buyers have changed. "In the past, large foreign buyers connected with large domestic factories, but now it is small and medium-sized overseas entrepreneurs and KOLs who connect with small and medium-sized domestic entrepreneurs. This trend change has brought many opportunities to online entrepreneurs like us. Alibaba International Station is a digital foreign trade matching platform that is very precise in this type of demand, and we must seize this opportunity. "

According to Lu Jia, head of the buyer business department of Alibaba International Station , intensive visits to a large number of North American buyers in March and April also confirmed the merchants' findings. Currently in the overseas market , young buyers , millennials , and Generation Z are becoming managers and practitioners , and they have a stronger acceptance of new technologies such as digital foreign trade.

According to a B2B market survey by communications group WPP , 47% of B2B buyers admitted that their loyalty to B2B sellers they had previously contacted offline has decreased due to working from home ; 69 % of B2B buyers said they are more likely to purchase products from suppliers with digital innovation capabilities.

(Photo: Lu Jia, head of Alibaba International Station’s buyer business department )

At present, digital foreign trade is becoming an inevitable option and an irreversible trend in global trade. The recently released half-year report on digital foreign trade of Alibaba International Station shows that in the first half of 2023, on Alibaba International Station, overseas online demand increased by 33% year-on-year ; 90% of industries saw rapid growth in online exports, and 91% of overseas markets saw an increase in online traffic : not only did emerging markets such as Southeast Asia continue to grow at a high speed, but traditional foreign trade markets such as Europe and the United States also returned to the growth track.

Haitong Securities, a leading domestic brokerage firm, also recently released its latest research report focusing on the B2B digital foreign trade track, believing that the performance of digital foreign trade is "better than the market."

At the same time, new technologies have made foreign trade simpler and more efficient. Combined with the high profits and labor-saving operation characteristics of the B2B model itself, it can be said that B2B digital foreign trade is becoming a "shortcut" for small and medium-sized enterprises to go overseas.

Alibaba International Station

AI

application