Pay more attention to consumers: exploring customer acquisition strategies of large third-party sellers on e-B2C market
Industrial Management & Data Systems
ISSN: 0263-5577
Article publication date: 4 April 2024
Issue publication date: 12 April 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This study develops an empirical framework to address how large third-party sellers (TPSs) can apply customer acquisition strategies to improve their performance in consumers’ person-goods matching process and how the platform firm’s similar strategies moderate the effects of TPSs’ strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data collected from the top ten TPSs from a Chinese e-commerce platform, the fixed effect model is used to validate the conceptual model and hypotheses.
Findings
The study results show that both market detection strategy and matching optimization strategy can help large TPSs improve their sales performance. Moreover, the similar market detection strategy applied by the platform firm weakens the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies, while the similar matching optimization strategy applied by the platform firm strengthens the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies.
Originality/value
This study provides firsthand evidence on the performance of large TPSs’ and the platform firm’s strategies. It demonstrates the effectiveness of large TPSs’ market detection strategy and matching optimization strategy, which can be adopted to meet consumers’ search and evaluation motivations in their person-goods matching process respectively. Moreover, it identifies the role of platform firms by showing the moderating effect of similar strategies adopted by the platform firm on the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Key Project of National Social Science Foundation [grant no. 21ZDA026], National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant no. 71972021], Graduate Research and Innovation Foundation of Chongqing, China [grant no. CYB22049], the Humanity and Social Science foundation of Ministry of Education of China [grant no. 18XJA630004], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant no. 2021CDJSKCG20, 2020CDJSK02YJ08], the Chongqing Talent Funds [grant no. cstc2021ycjh-bgzxm0213].
Citation
Li, X., Wu, Z., Huang, Q. and Liu, J. (2024), "Pay more attention to consumers: exploring customer acquisition strategies of large third-party sellers on e-B2C market", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 124 No. 4, pp. 1558-1581. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-01-2023-0059
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited