Service Optimization Strategies for Cross-Border E-Commerce Platforms Under the E-Commerce Politeness Framework: A Critical Incident Analysis Based on User Reviews

Cross-border e-commerce has become a core growth driver of global trade, with industry competition shifting from price wars to consumer experience-centered value competition. After the core of competition in cross-border e-commerce shifted from price to consumer experience, constructing an integrated analytical framework to systematically optimize experience has become crucial, while existing studies have rarely examined the relationship between e-commerce politeness and consumer experience. To address this, this study proposes a comprehensive analytical framework of “e-commerce politeness,” aiming to explore the synergistic effects of multidimensional factors on consumer experience. This study adopts the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) for qualitative analysis of 350 Amazon sports and outdoor product reviews, supplemented by expert classification and reliability-validity control to ensure research rigor. Through this study, this study identifies six core dimensions affecting consumer experience, including usage experience, product quality, logistics service, after-sales service, scenario experience, and value-added service. The results show that positive experience is mainly driven by usage experience and product quality, while negative experience is primarily attributed to quality issues; logistics and after-sales service focus more on risk avoidance than on experience enhancement. This study demonstrates that e-commerce politeness is a multidimensional synergistic system, which can mitigate the uncertainty of cross-border shopping by reducing decision-making costs, enhancing transaction reliability, and optimizing contextual adaptability. Through the above research, This study extends interpersonal politeness theory to human-computer interaction, provides empirical support for 'platform as a social actor', and offers practical optimization directions for cross-border e-commerce stakeholders.