Network and International WeChat Agent Purchasing Business

¹ Department of Economics, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, 80208, United States
² Cardiff Six form College Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1AW, United Kingdom

^* Corresponding author: xiao.3.li@ucdenver.edu

Abstract

With the development of globalization and the Internet, a new type of e-commerce, namely international WeChat agent Purchase (also known as “Daigou”), has achieved success. This is a kind of business that WeChat merchants represent their customers for overseas shopping. These sole proprietorships include a large number of international students, tourists, and long-term Chinese expatriates. They combine the networks of their purveyors and customers to sell foreign products on WeChat, the most popular national communication application and use the price difference between these products in China and other countries as a profit opportunity. In this case, the customer and the purchasing agents had become interconnected nodes and form a unique commercial operation mode, which is not only building a commercial network and constructing based on a kind of social network. Through this approach, the purchase agent established their own business and commercial system. This article will analyze the operation mode of its business and the method of purchase agents building their customer network, the profitability of companies in this business network, and the role of network in the profit-making.