Enhancing the precision of supply chain management and reducing operational costs are crucial for the development of the cross-border e-commerce market. However, existing research often overlooks the demand uncertainty caused by seasonal variations and the challenges of handling returns in logistics. Therefore, this paper proposes a SARIMA-CNN-BiLSTM prediction model that effectively captures both the seasonal and nonlinear characteristics of cross-border e-commerce supply chains. Additionally, by incorporating the returns process, a supply chain distribution optimization model is developed with the objective of minimizing total operational costs. The model is solved using an improved whale optimization algorithm. In validation with real-world data, the SARIMA-CNN-BiLSTM model achieved a mean absolute percentage error reduction of 6.479 and 7.703 compared to convolutional neural network (CNN) and BiLSTM models, respectively. Moreover, the chosen optimization algorithm reduced the cost by 231,310 CNY, 62,564 CNY, and 131,632 CNY compared to the whale optimization algorithm, genetic algorithm, and particle swarm optimization, respectively. The proposed approach provides robust support for cross-border e-commerce enterprises in reducing costs and enhancing efficiency in their operations.
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