Web Content Construction In B2B Cross-border E-commerce Enterprises From A Multimodal Perspective

The dramatic increase in the number of online shoppers worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic marks an acceleration of the shift in consumer behavior towards the “online first” model.The acceleration of the shift to online shopping forces many global retail businesses to adapt their business models,which offers a huge opportunity for the development of cross-border e-commerce.Serving as the bridge for communication between cross-border e-commerce enterprises and global customers,a corporate website,especially the company profile and product introductory sections,is an effective marketing tool to build corporate identity and convey product and company-related information.Thus,a well-established corporate website in the cross-border e-commerce platform is a vital factor for Chinese cross-border e-commerce enterprises to stand out from the booming but fiercely competitive e-commerce marketplace.Anchored in the multimodal perspective,the present study provides an insight into the ways in which well-run cross-border e-commerce enterprises employ multimodal elements to advertise products and promote corporate image.Bhatia’s critical genre analysis and Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar are adopted to examine the genre construction of product introductory and company profile discourse and the visual construction of product and company profile pictures.The data for this thesis include 32 well-run cross-border e-commerce companies,taken from Alibaba.com-the largest B2 B cross-border e-commerce platform in China.The major findings reveal that: for the verbal level,the move structure of the company profile section includes 4 obligatory moves and 1 optional move,while 3obligatory moves and 1 optional move constitute the product introductory section.The company profile discourse has four distinct linguistic features,such as the frequent occurrence of positive vocabularies,the repetition of company name and the pronoun “we”,the use of nominal phrases as well as the distribution of declarative and imperative sentences.The linguistic features of product introductory discourse involve the application of specialized language and the presentation of numerals and the large proportion of nominal phrases.In order to achieve different communicative purposes,cross-border e-commerce professionals blend introductory,promotional,and business reporting genres to describe product and company information.Meanwhile,two dominating professional cultures,namely customer-orientated and competitiveness-oriented cultures are embedded in product introductory and company profile discourse.For the visual level,281 product images and 164 company profile pictures are analyzed in this study,from which conceptual and “offer” images outnumber other types of images both in the company profile section and product introductory section.Product images and company profile pictures photographed from frontal and eye-level angles in a medium or close shot also occupy a large proportion.The visual composition of product images and company profile pictures is dominated by a centre-margin structure.Furthermore,cross-border e-commerce professionals tend to exploit salient visual clues and framing devices to highlight the prominent product and company information such as the color contrasts,frame lines,the selection of size,sharpness,etc.The findings of the study will provide feasible suggestions to help cross-border e-commerce enterprises on how to write company profiles and describe product information and how to select and photograph suitable product images and company profile pictures.