Rapid shipping for cross-border E-Commerce: A Sino-Japanese case study on express liner optimization under China's 9610 import mode

In the context of cross-border e-commerce becoming the fastest growing mode of foreign trade and demand increasing for rapid cross-border maritime transportation, based on the opportunity cost of bilateral cross-border e-commerce commodities, and taking into account the complementary nature of the inventory cost and transportation cost in the process of door-to-door transportation, we propose the cross-border e-commerce express liner service. For China's 9610 import mode, with the objective of minimizing the total generalized transportation cost of China's cross-border e-commerce import cargoes, an optimization model is built to implement the decision-making of the ship size, voyage speed and departure frequency for the express liner shipping. Numerical analysis is implemented as an example of Sino-Japanese cross-border e-commerce, where Chinese imported cargoes are divided into four categories according to their values, the modal splits of the three transportation modes are calculated separately, and the service metrics of the express liner shipping is determined. This study not only lays the foundation for building a transportation system for Sino-Japanese cross-border e-commerce, but also provide a reference for the innovation of transportation modes for other bilateral cross-border e-commerce.