A Review of After-Sales Service Practice of Chinese Agricultural Machinery in Cross-Border E-Commerce in Africa

Abstract

After-sales service (ASS) is an important element after the production has been sold to the end-users also those who use agricultural machinery. This paper aims to review to some extent the ASS practice of Chinese agricultural machinery in cross-border e-commerce in Africa which has been an active practical and research topic in China, and for that matter globally, since 2000. This review for ASS of agricultural machinery will be shown on the following dimensions: technician/expert, timely repair, spare part, maintenance, training course as well as user information system and service center. By means of previous authors' views, analyses and integration pertaining to above six aspects of ASS, it is concluded that the ASS of Chinese agricultural machinery is urgently necessary also in Africa. A conceptual framework of risk reduction of after-sales service of agricultural machinery in cross-border e-commerce is designed and presented based on the literature review and inductive reasoning as the final process of this paper. The research method followed in this paper is exploratory based on literature review as well as aspects of design science research.