Current Research Bulletin

The global cross-border e-commerce industry is continuing to expand. Temu, with its "full-service model" and extremely low price strategy, has developed rapidly in the overseas market. However, in high-engagement categories such as consumer electronics, price advantage alone is insufficient to sustain long-term user loyalty, and platform competition is gradually shifting towards a comprehensive experience competition centered on "user experience perception". Against this backdrop, this study introduces the concept of "e-commerce politeness" - the perception of respect and care conveyed through language, information, and services in the e-commerce environment - as a theoretical framework. Using the critical incident technique (CIT), the study systemically collected and analyzed 120 satisfactory incidents and 120 unsatisfactory incidents from the consumer electronics category on the Temu platform. The results show that satisfactory incidents can be categorized into five types, with "product quality" and "demand matching" being the main reasons for satisfaction. Unsatisfactory incidents are also divided into five categories, with "product quality", "design features", and "product performance" accounting for the highest proportions. Based on these findings, it is revealed that there are still deficiencies in product performance, product quality, and design features of consumer electronics on the Temu platform. Therefore, specific improvement recommendations are proposed for Temu from three aspects: the platform, merchants, and users. The aim is to promote the transition of cross-border e-commerce from single price competition to value competition centered on e-commerce politeness.

E-commerce Politeness, Temu, Cross-border E-commerce, Consumer Electronics, Critical Incident Technique, User Experience

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