Sales Booster & Obstacles Faced

How DHgate is Using E-marketplace to Boost its Sales and Marketing? What is the obstacle(s) faced?

  

1.         Launching of Merchant Rating System  (Tepper, 2015)

In order to transform itself from being primarily a “seller’s service” to a portal that caters more to the needs of buyers, DHgate deploys a system called Merchant Rating System (MRS) into its channel to increase the buyers’ confidence. DHgate’s old system rates merchants solely by the number of sales generated. To upgrade the system, MRS embraces various measures such as sellers’ response time to enquiries, product quality, product information, and the information sellers furnished on the shipping status of orders. A combination of these factors will mark off sellers into four categories: Top Merchant, Premium Merchant, Standard Merchant and Below Standard Merchant.

For instance, a product listing by a merchant with a “Top Merchant” ranking will display a Top Merchant logo. By mouse-pointing over that logo, a buyer will manage to notice that the seller with Top Merchant logo offers best service, high-quality products, and receive a lot of positive reviews from its buyers.

On the other hand, if a merchant is rated “Below Standard Merchant”, DHgate will analyze its order data, communicate with the seller and offer advice to improve the seller’s performance. However, DHgate will terminate and close the seller’s account if the seller is still rated as “Below Standard” after six months period. Moreover, those “Below Standard” merchants will have lower listings on search results, and they will be forbidden from purchasing advertising on DHgate. 

Obstacle(s) faced:

Not in doubt, all the merchants will strive for a higher ranking in DHgate in order to boost buyers’ confidence on themselves. In this case, some merchants may provide fake and wrong information to the customers in pursuing the customers to make orders with them. For example, some of the sellers do not have the inventory in stock when the buyer makes order. Before this, there is a rule in DHgate stated that if the seller doesn’t send out the item ordered within the assigned processing time, the order will be cancelled automatically. Instead of letting the order being cancelled, some of the sellers will fill in a fake tracking number in the system to pretend that they already shipped out the item ordered. This makes the buyers feeling disappointed and being cheated, when they are trying to check their orders’ shipping status which ended up seeing no information.

2.    Enforcement of Marketplace Content Monitoring Solution (MCMS)  (Tepper, 2016; "DHgate Combats Counterfeits with Austreme's Marketplace Content Monitoring Solution", 2016)

To boost its sales and marketing, DHgate has appointed Austreme as the service provider to deliver its Marketplace Content Monitoring Solution (MCMS) reporting system. By implementing MCMS, DHgate believes that it is able to improve the accuracy of product authentication and prevent IP infringement issues arising from fake product listings from DHgate sellers. High level of accountability can be provided as every review process such as product description, picture, price, seller transaction history and accreditation into account is tracked by Austreme's comprehensive MCMS. This process ensures credibility and serves as accreditation for trustworthy sellers in the DHgate marketplace.

For example, Dhgate’s sellers will be fined if their product descriptions do not match with the item received by customers. MCMS requires sellers to deposit a certain amount of money on the platform as collateral to act as a way to hold sellers accountable for providing products that match the descriptions online. If fraud is being tracked by MCMS or there is a customer complaint submitted on the DHgate platform, there will be corresponding fines and penalties.

Besides, MCMS is able to monitor how long sellers have been logged on to their profile at DHgate.com. This is an indicator designed for making sure sellers comply with certain log-in time durations, so that they will be available online to answer buyers’ questions. In DHgate, the longer the seller has been logged on to their profile, the higher he or she will rank on search result pages.

Obstacle(s) faced:

     Well-trained technicians and plenty of time needed in implementing this system. For instance, investigation and continuous follow up has to be carried out before fining or penalizing the fraudulent seller or making compensation to the buyers. In such, DHgate has to put their effort on these issues which will divert their workforce from focusing in improving the system.

3.        Development of Mobile Application

Mobile applications are gaining momentum nowadays. The latest data from Yahoo's Flurry analytics shows that 90 percent of consumer's mobile time is spent in mobile applications. As they put it: It’s an App World. With no exception, DHgate developed and came out its very own mobile application for its users in order to boost the sales and marketing. The mobile application is available in both iOS App Store and Google Play.

Click on the icons below to download DHgate Mobile Application now!

                           

     By developing the mobile application, customer relationship is being improved and strengthen as it allow DHgate to send personalized updates related to its products and services to the existing customers in real-time. For example, instant messaging is available after the installation of mobile app. In this way, the sellers and app users can get in touch to each other anytime and anywhere. It does shorten the inquiry time and this indirectly cut down the time taken for an order being made.

Additionally, mobile application allows DHgate to access client details and receive feedback, which can be leveraged to improve long-term customer relationships. Feedbacks from app users can be utilized in improving accountability of the mobile app as well as increasing users’ level of satisfaction.

Furthermore, customers could save more in terms of time and money by using the DHgate mobile application as some of the promotions and discounts are specially provided only to app users.

Obstacle(s) faced:

Firstly, the cost spending on developing apps is high for better quality of application. Since millions of mobile apps existing in the market, there is both huge time and financial cost to stand out from the fierce competition. In such case, there will be a deficiency if spending on developing application is higher than the profits earn.

Moreover, when downloading mobile applications, users possibly have to allow the publishers to track or analyze their actions as well as allow access to users’ personal information that contained in their phones. This would give birth to the loss or abuse of personal information. Due to these reasons, some of the consumers may reject to download mobile application.