Battle of the Ocean: A Study if the Internationalization Efforts of Aliexpress

Abstract

AliExpress is experiencing low customer ratings on 3rd party review sites compared to Western competitors; eBay and Amazon. This study sets out to find out what causes this difference as well as uncovering the underlying challenges associated with the successful facilitation of commerce between Chinese vendors and Western consumers.
Established theories of internationalization are applied to uncover missing aspects of successful internationalization. The findings are proceeded by a thorough comparative analysis of the Western-, and Chinese e-shopping environment to uncover the causes of perceived Psychological Contract Violation in Western consumers. This analysis concludes that the onsite feedback mechanism is unfit to bridge the gap in psychic distance and make up for the differences in online shopping behavior between Chinese and Western culture. This leads to the existence of misalignments between expectation and reality in relation to the boundaries of physical and psychological transaction contracts.