The moderate-reputation trap: Evidence from a Chinese cross-border business-to-business e-commerce portal

Online Reputation for Food Sector Exporters in the B2B Context: The Importance of Sustainability

Food exporting companies play a fundamental role in the development of international trade. However, the conceptualization and measurement of their online corporate reputation has not been extensively studied in Business to Business markets, unlike in Business to Consumer contexts. The aim of this research is to identify the variables that determine the online reputation of food companies operating in B2B markets, and to analyze their relationship with the volume of food exports. For this purpose, a three-stage quantitative and qualitative study has been developed, based on in-depth interviews with experts from export organizations and managers of Peruvian food exporting companies, the estimation of an Advanced Sentiment Analysis, the construction of a Total Online Reputation Index (TOR), and the development of regression analysis. The study has identified 13 variables that affect the online reputation of food exporting companies and indicates that the presence of sustainability content on their website and the number of pages visited positively affect the volume of food exports. Moreover, the TOR could have a significant explanatory capacity with respect to company exports. These results constitute a reference guide for both companies in the sector and official export agencies, highlighting the critical aspects to promote their exports.

E-Commerce Policy and International Business

The rise of digitization and information and communication technologies (ICT) is playing a vital role in facilitating global trade and business activities and in overcoming cross-border transaction costs. In so doing, it offers firms significant benefits and opportunities to compete on a global scale, as witnessed during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The growth and widespread diffusion of internet-enabled technologies and platforms have created numerous opportunities for firms to provide products and services across both developed and developing markets. Yet, limited research has been conducted in the international business domain to explore the rise of ecommerce and its implications for international business scholarship. In this focused issue, we present an examination of the role played by e-commerce in international business, paying particular attention to the policy aspect of e-commerce and issuing a call for a greater integration of e-commerce policy in international business research.

The Impact of International Electronic Commerce on Export Trade: Evidence from China

The impact of international electronic commerce (IEC) on export trade increases along with its expanding scale. Based on relevant data and the gravity model of China’s IEC export trade, this paper develops a theoretical model that can be used in IEC scenarios, applies regression equations, a Hausman test, and other empirical methods to verify relevant data, and performs a robustness test. The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanism of IEC impact on China’s trade, and hopefully to study the temporal structural changes of the impact of IEC activities on China’s export trade based on the financial crisis and European debt crisis variables. The innovation of this paper is mainly reflected in the large sample of China’s trade selected in this paper. It can also determine the changes in the distance effect of international trade in the era of IEC, and reveal the mechanism by which IEC applications help foreign trade enterprises overcome economic crises. Four key conclusions are obtained as follows. First, the development of IEC has significantly promoted the expansion of China’s export trade scale. Second, in the context of the global financial crisis and European debt crisis, the positive promotion effect of IEC on exports is not significant. Third, the promotion effects of IEC on China’s exports to both developing and industrialized countries are significant, with the impact on developed country exports being slightly greater. Fourth, although the geographical distance for measuring transportation costs has a negative effect on China’s exports, such effect has been greatly weakened.