Research on Online Discourse of Cross-Border E-commerce Platform on the Basis of Co-operative Principle

Abstract

China’s cross-border e-commerce industry has shown a blow-out trend fueled by the rapidly-improved informatization of the society and powerful support of government. However, the increasing platforms in the market, the homogenizing merchandise, and the decreasing of conversion cost bring enormous challenges to the platforms. In order to survive in the fierce competition, they must improve the quality of services in the communication with consumers so as to enhance the core competitiveness centered on consumers. In this research, we compiled 100 real cases of cross-border e-commerce platform online discourse by collecting chat records from the online interaction between 50 college students and the platform merchants on the Tmall international platform. This study analyzes these online discourse cases from the perspective of Grice’s Co-operative principle. The study demonstrates that, the application of Grice’s Co-operative principle can enable cross-border e-commerce platforms to effectively adopt and employ the most appropriate interactive discourse, which exerts an tremendous influence on improving the quality of communication services. And there is a positive correlation between the usage of the Co-operative principle and the monthly sales volume of the platform.