Cross-Border E-Commerce

Abstract

E-commerce is a vastly developing topic. The ongoing globalisation and digitalisation have provided new market entry strategies to companies who want to sell abroad, such as Cross-Border E-Commerce. This strategy could bring great potential, especially for brand manufacturers, since they face competition with traditional intermediaries when selling directly to their consumers. This thesis examined (1) the current research on Cross-Border E-Commerce, (2) the concept of Direct-to-Consumer Commerce and its challenges and benefits for brand manufacturers, and (3) strategies for brand manufacturers to sell abroad. It then conducted a survey to investigate through which channels Swiss consumers buy branded products from foreign brand manufacturers. The collected data was analysed using hypothesis testing, the chi-squared independence test, and the contingency coefficient. After analysing the collected information, three possible strategies were developed: (1) the multiple-channel strategy, (2) the Direct-to-Consumer strategy, and (3) the B2B2C strategy. The strategies only focus on online selling since this was the preferred channel of most participants from the survey. Finally, the strategies developed were evaluated based on scenarios’ descriptive design evaluation method. The evaluation followed a discussion of the finding and a conclusion about the conducted research. The thesis had a pragmatic research philosophy and followed a deductive and inductive approach. The chosen methodology was mixed-method research, and the strategy underlying the thesis was design science research. The paper also briefly discussed different research strategies which could have been applied.