Dropshipping is when you order from a merchant and all the merchant does is make an order with your name and address from someplace else. In other words, you could have simply made that second order yourself and saved yourself whatever margin the merchant added on top.
Do note that dropshipping is a very specific term, which does not mean "importing things from another country and then selling them locally", but rather "taking orders from customers and then just ordering a shipment from someone else directly to the customer". For example it would be dropshipping if I made an eBay listing for some product and, whenever someone bought the eBay listing, just ordered the product from Amazon to their address. I never touched or shipped the product; I just made another order posing as the customer.
It's not ethical for someone to clone a more expensive version of some Amazon listing onto another site, and then order stuff from Amazon to whoever buys the listing, pocketing the difference. It's just scummy. Sites like Alibaba really do help because otherwise importing stuff is a lot more manual of a process, but dropshipping on its own is just ugh.
> It's not ethical for someone to clone a more expensive version of some Amazon listing onto another site, and then order stuff from Amazon to whoever buys the listing, pocketing the difference
This is textbook marketing. You connect buyers and sellers and take a profit. You are bringing the product to the attention of a previously-unaware consumer. I can't imagine what you think is not ethical about this.
It's okay when the product they're selling is their own product. Say, Amazon fulfillment. The manufacturer sends their products to an Amazon warehouse and then Amazon handles shipping them out. But if a seller claims to have their own product but then just goes to another listing and buys it to the customer, that is what I think is unethical.
IMHO reselling is OK only if it's disclosed what the original brand of the product is... but even reselling doesn't necessarily imply dropshipping.
Do note that dropshipping is a very specific term, which does not mean "importing things from another country and then selling them locally", but rather "taking orders from customers and then just ordering a shipment from someone else directly to the customer". For example it would be dropshipping if I made an eBay listing for some product and, whenever someone bought the eBay listing, just ordered the product from Amazon to their address. I never touched or shipped the product; I just made another order posing as the customer.