Retail in Asia

In Trends

TradeTuber targets need for integrity in e-commerce

According to the latest statistics released by the WTO, China’s exports accounted for 9.6 percent of the global total in 2009, up from the previous year’s 8.9 percent, meaning the country has supplanted Germany as the world’s largest exporter. E-commerce, which can break the barriers of distance, language, time and cost, is playing an important role in driving the export of Asian products, with made-in-China ones in particular seeing an increase in popularity.

Globally speaking, the core strength of e-commerce lies in its price. Higher inventory turnover rate and lower operating costs are advantages as compared with traditional store channels. In the arena of international trade however, price is just one side of the coin, with the flipside being the competition in integrity.

Understandably, many international buyers would rather pay a higher price than risk receiving fake goods or nothing for their money.

E-commerce is a solution to the long-standing issue of information asymmetry between buyers and sellers; however it also leads to a new issue: excessive options can make it difficult for buyers to form an opinion. Can best sellers be identified by their gold and platinum titles or high rankings? The answer is most definitely no. As many buyers are aware, such titles and rankings can be purchased from e-commerce website managers. Knowing this, many buyers are justifiably concerned about the possibility of being cheated.

How then can we go about creating a win-win situation in which e-commerce platforms not only help buyers purchase in an easy and efficient way, but also aid them in locating the most trustworthy sellers?

TradeTuber, an online supplier community that uses an "integrity index", hopes to provide the answer with what the company describes as "an online commerce environment of safety, fairness and integrity". Through the community, buyers can find suppliers with the industry’s most popular products, while the risk of fraud is significantly reduced thanks to the site’s integrity index, says the company. The index is based on five criteria: the certification of a third-party organisation recognised by international buyers; visitor traffic to products on the seller’s website; comments by peers and buyers; the quantity of buyer inquiries; and the degree of matching of key words. The index ranks suppliers according to objective judgement criteria based on the online community’s opinions. To help sellers meantime, buyers are categorised into general buyers and VIP buyers (who must submit their past purchasing record), giving suppliers an idea about a buyer’s likely intent and needs.

The TradeTuber community has grown in the space of a year to include over 5,000 VIP buyers and more than 1,000 suppliers. For more information, visit TradeTuber.