Estimation of the Competitive Relationships between Amazon, Alibaba, and Suning Based on a Grey Tripartite Lotka-Volterra Model

摘要

In recent years, the boom of e-commerce has greatly changed China's trade pattern and fierce competition among e-commerce enterprises promotes the development of the e-commerce industry. This study expands the existing grey Lotka-Volterra model for two populations to the grey tripartite Lotka-Volterra model which is suitable for the analysis of the competitive relationships among three populations, and proposes optimisation methods for the background values of this model. On this basis, by sampling quarterly sales of Amazon, Alibaba, and Suning from 2012 to 2015, the market competition relationships, the equilibrium points, and stabilities of sales among the three major e-commerce companies are analysed and their future development trends are forecasted The results reveal that Alibaba wins market share from Suning and Amazon, while the operations of Suning and Amazon are unable to threaten the development of Alibaba. Furthermore, the quarterly sales of the three e-commerce companies keeps growing in the next few quarters and stabilise at 2.1113 trillion, 235.7 billion, and 97 billion yuan. Finally, according to the above conclusions, this study makes suggestions for the development of e-commerce enterprises.