Sellers Commodity Selection Strategy On Cross-Border E-Commerce Platform In Africa

In recent years,cross-border e-commerce platforms have developed rapidly under the background of information technology development.From the initial European and American markets,the export areas of cross-border e-commerce platforms have gradually radiated to markets in Africa,Southeast Asia and South America,providing SMEs and overse as consumers with commodity display services and logistics and transportation services.Cross-border e-commerce enterprises cannot operate without product selection,and new products can also inject vitality into cross-border enterprises.However,in the actual operation of cross-border enterprises,SMEs do not analyse their own scale and economic strength in detail,do not understand the market trends of the regions they sell in,and sell products in a wide range of categories,making the products they sell enter a red sea of competition,with a low input-output ratio,which affects their profits.The African cross-border e-commerce in this thesis belongs to the emerging cross-border e-commerce market.Therefore,this thesis conducts research on the African market K platform,crawls the consumer purchase data within the first level category,and formulates the selection strategy through the results of data analysis to help African cross-border e-commerce enterprises to select products for sale and enhance their profits.This thesis lists seven types of selection models currently applicable to cross-border e-commerce platform selection and analyses their advantages and disadvantages.Among them,the industry trend,technology-oriented and capital-oriented categories are suitable for cross-border e-commerce enterprises of a certain scale,while smaller enterprises that have been in the cross-border e-commerce industry for a shorter period of time are more suitable to adopt supply chain-oriented and internal platform-oriented product selection.It then points out that SMEs within the African cross-border e-commerce market have problems such as neglecting market segmentation,lack of overseas market sensitivity and serious homogenised competition when selecting products.Using Platform K as an example,a cluster analysis system is involved based on factors of the product itself and market environment indicators.By capturing the sales data of various types of products on K Platform’s Ghanaian website,three groups of category clusters with their own characteristics were eventually generated based on a rapid cluster analysis,and the characteristics of suppliers in each group were compared as a way to better understand the factors of product selection for multinational e-commerce.The study showed that the categories available for placement in the African market are concentrated in four main categories:apparel,luggage,jewellery and mobile phones.The mobile phone category is higher in value but operates in smaller volumes,making it more suitable for companies with established supply channels.In order to meet market demand,cross-border e-commerce enterprises can consider laying out the apparel,bags and jewellery categories,and take into account their own enterprise scale and economic strength,adopt product complementary or alternative strategies,bundle and launch new products,break homogenous competition through differentiated product selection,so as to effectively enter the African market and achieve the development of multinational e-commerce enterprises and their own profitability.