A two-sided matching model in the context of B2B export cross-border e-commerce

Abstract

Cross-border electronic commerce plays an increasingly key role in international trades, which has become the focus of concern in both academia and industry. However, how to better match overseas demanders and domestic suppliers is still a question for business-to-business export agent. To achieve a steady state, in this study, we apply the two-sided matching method to business-to-business export cross-border electronic commerce context based on the satisfaction of different stakeholders, i.e., sellers, buyers, platforms, and third-party service providers. The satisfaction degree is based on a series of indicators extracted from the prior literature. By incorporating both the linguistic and interval assessment information, we theoretically build an optimization model to match the two sides: overseas demanders and domestic suppliers. Then we empirically illustrate the feasibility and performance of the model through the numerical simulations. The operation mechanisms and managerial guidelines for the two-sided matching in business-to-business export cross-border e-commerce are presented. Our study makes contributions in both theory and practice.