A Corpus-based Genre Analysis Of Introductions Of Chinese And American Products On Amazon

With the advancement of the "Belt and Road" initiative,more and more Chinese companies have entered the cross-border e-commerce platform,and the competition in the cross-border e-commerce industry is becoming increasingly fierce.As the main battlefield of cross-border e-commerce product sales,product detail pages play a vital role and determine the conversion rate of store products.For the back-to-back sales situation of buyers and sellers in e-commerce,the product details page is an important channel for enterprises to communicate with consumers,a bridge for communication between the two parties.Therefore,optimizing the product page design of the e-commerce platform is one of the most important tasks for merchants.Therefore,the quality of the product detail page will directly affect the conversion of product transactions,that is,the product detail page carries the traffic of the store and the order volume of the company.However,the existing research is not deep enough for this important genre form of product introduction.This study focuses on move analysis,one of the most common methods in genre analysis,combining qualitative and quantitative research methods.Based on the"Biber-Connor-Upton"method framework,this study successfully performed a Move analysis on a total of 100 product introductions from Chinese and American merchants according to a seven-step process,and summarized the typical distribution and structural characteristics of the Move-Step types of PIs on e-commerce platforms.Overall,10 move types(Titling,Providing Key Specifications,Listing Five Bullet Points,Building Brand Recognition,Introducing Product Description,Listing Product Details,Providing Product Guides and Documents,Showing Videos,Showing Important Information and Presenting Communications with Customer)were observed across all corpus.Among them,Titling,Providing Key Specifications,Listing Five Bullet Points,Introducing Product Description,Listing Product Details,Showing Videos,Presenting Communications with Customer are obligatory moves.The relatively fixed order of these moves is product title,product key parameters,product bullet points,product brand image,product detailed description,product detailed information,product video and customer communication feedback.At the same time,a considerable number of merchants put the product brand image after the product detail description,or the product brand image and product detail description alternately appear twice.In general,there is not a big gap between product introductions from Chinese and American merchants in the layout and length of the overall Move.The main differences between Chinese and American merchants are reflected in those more complicated moves,such as Titling,Listing Five Bullet Points and Introducing Product Description.Chinese merchants generally prefer to list product features,functions,composition,applicable scenarios and groups of people.In addition,usually the description written by Chinese merchants is very detailed and lengthy.Product introductions written by American merchants,when introducing product features and functions,the language is relatively concise,systematic and organized.At the same time,in addition to only introducing one single product,American merchants also pay more attention to promoting the brand culture,history and brand operating philosophy on the product introduction page,and recommend other related products of the brand in more locations.The findings of this study have important theoretical and practical implications.First,the analysis of the language moves of the product introduction text further enhances the understanding of the special discourse genre of product introduction and enriches the research on business English communication.Second,the detailed comparison of product introductions written by Chinese and American merchants shows the focus and skills of e-commerce practitioners in different cultural backgrounds when conducting business communication.Finally,the explanation about the reasons for the similarities and differences provides some inspiration for merchants to write such genre texts better.Especially for Chinese merchants,it provides an important reference for improving their localization on foreign e-commerce platforms.