Has the E-Commerce Platform Improved Its Competi-tiveness from Cross-Border Community Group Buying Business
The rapid change of technology and the widespread popu-larity of the Internet have reduced the difficulty for Internet platform enterprises to obtain customers,making them obtain larger traffic scale.As a result,a number of Internet platform enterprises have grown rapidly and developed into large Internet platform enterprises.However,with the rising cost of customer acquisition,the develop-ment dividend of Internet platform enterprises is about to be exhaust-ed.In order to obtain a larger range of user scale and user types,the competition mode of Internet platform enterprises tends to diversify,from the mainstream price competition strategy to non price compe-tition strategy.Especially in recent years,it is common for platform enterprises to adopt cross-border competition strategy.For example,community group buying business,which has the advantage of inte-grating social and e-commerce,is favored by e-commerce platforms for reducing traffic costs.The emergence of the COVID-19 in 2020 also enabled consumers to enjoy the convenience brought by the community group buying business and continue this consumption habit.The market potential of community group buying business is enormous,and the number of active users continues to increase.Once consumers form online consumption habits,it will also help promote the online sales of other products on e-commerce platforms;This has attracted major e-commerce giants to cross over and introduce com-munity group buying businesses,such as JD's"Jingxi Pinpin"and Pinduoduo's"Duoduo Maicai"e-commerce platforms,which have entered the new track of community group buying.The reasons why e-commerce platforms adopt cross-border compe-tition strategies include two aspects.On the one hand,cross-border strategies help platform enterprises acquire differentiated resources or capabilities;On the other hand,cross-border strategies enable plat-form enterprises to explore and integrate heterogeneous user resourc-es,and integrate and utilize them to create new value.The mechanism of cross-border community group buying on e-commerce platforms includes two aspects.For seller users,e-commerce platforms offer new products or services that differ from the original e-commerce platform by adding new types of merchants.E-commerce platforms have expanded the total number of seller users and enriched the types of seller user groups through cross-border expansion;For buyer users,e-commerce platforms will migrate some of their existing buyer users to the platform's community group buying business.At this point,the e-commerce platform has successfully crossed over and achieved the minimum network user scale for entering the community group buying business.When large Internet platform enterprises adopt cross-border competition strategies to enter other industries,they of-ten use the method of"low price competition in the market and price increase after monopoly"to compete for user scale.This disorderly expansion disrupts the market price order.However,Internet plat-form enterprises are different from the traditional unilateral market and have the characteristics of a bilateral market,which has brought certain difficulties to antitrust regulation.Correspondingly,whether e-commerce platforms can establish competitive advantages from cross-border operations and seize excess profits on this basis,and whether this strategy harms consumer welfare and overall social wel-fare.The answers to these questions have certain reference value for government regulatory departments to guide cross-border behavior of e-commerce platforms,effectively maintain healthy market develop-ment and fair competition.The main research content of this paper includes three aspects:the theoretical logical framework of cross-border e-commerce platforms,model construction and analysis,and numerical simulation and case analysis.Specifically,after clarifying the essential differences be-tween e-commerce platform and community group purchase,this pa-per identifies and analyzes the cross-border of e-commerce platform,and explains the mechanism of cross-border process.Construct the competition model of e-commerce platform under the two situations of non cross-border and cross-border,investigate the competition changes and cross-border boundaries caused by cross-border e-com-merce platform,then analyze the impact of cross-border platform on welfare,and verify the conclusions by numerical simulation and case review,so as to put forward corresponding management enlighten-ment and policy suggestions.The study found that,first,cross-border platforms will have cross-border effects,and the pricing level and profit level of cross-border and non cross-border platforms will be regulated by cross-border effects.Second,the cross-border effect will expand the scale of bilateral users of cross-border platforms and reduce the scale of bilateral users of non cross-border platforms.Third,the number of new merchant groups can affect the profit level of the cross-border platform by affecting the cross-border effect and cross-border cost.When the cross-border effect increases the profit of the cross-border platform beyond the restriction of the cross-border cost on the profit of the cross-border platform,the cross-border strat-egy improves the competitiveness of the platform.Fourth,the expan-sion of cross-border effects will increase consumer surplus and im-prove the overall social welfare level,and the consumer surplus after cross-border will increase,that is,cross-border is beneficial to con-sumers;However,if the cross-border cost is high and the cross-bor-der effect is small,the total social welfare after the cross-border is reduced,that is,the cross-border behavior of the platform reduces the total social welfare level.This paper has significant theoretical value and practical significance,and its potential marginal innovation are reflected in the following three aspects:Firstly,it examines the motives and mechanisms of platform enterprises crossing borders from the perspective of en-hancing competitiveness,which to some extent enriches the theory of platform economy.Secondly,the research examines the economic impact of platform enterprises implementing cross-border strategies.It explores the differences in platform competition effectiveness and social welfare levels by establishing game models in two scenarios:cross-border and non cross-border.It explains the advantages,dis-advantages,and boundaries of platform cross-border competition,enriches research on cross-border competition in bilateral markets,and provides theoretical basis for regulatory behavior of government anti-monopoly departments.Thirdly,from a methodological perspec-tive,this study utilizes the Haotailin linear city model to evaluate the impact of cross-border strategies on platform competition.Given the challenge of effectively identifying the impact of cross-border strategies,this study further validates the research results through numerical simulations and case analysis,and provides corresponding management insights for e-commerce platform enterprises to imple-ment cross-border behavior.
万方数据
维普
