The report – The 21st Century Spice Trade: A Guide to the Cross-Border E-Commerce Opportunity – looks in detail at the markets and products that offer the highest growth potential, the motivations and preferences of customers making international online purchases, and the success factors for online retailers that wish to expand overseas. It focuses in particular on the opportunity for premium products and service offerings, with higher basket values accounting for a significantly higher proportion of orders in cross-border transactions.

The report reveals that cross-border e-commerce offers aggregate growth rates not available in most other retail markets: cross-border retail volumes are predicted to increase at an annual average rate of 25% between 2015, twice the rate of domestic e-commerce growth. Online retailers are also boosting sales by an average 10-15%, simply by extending their offering to international customers. An additional boost comes from including a premium service offering: retailers and manufacturers that incorporated a faster shipping option into their online stores grew on average 1.6 times faster than other players.

Our global door-to-door time definite network is perfectly positioned to support any retailer that is developing a premium service offering, or simply looking for a way of reaching new overseas markets directly without investing resources in warehousing or distribution.