Ali Research Institute: the three forces of rural e-commerce can not be ignored.

Today, I would like to talk about the transformation of e-commerce in supply and marketing cooperatives. In the face of the leaders from provincial supply and marketing cooperatives across the country, I would like to point out in particular: is the reform of supply and marketing and the transformation of e-commerce a new task? Five and a half years ago, the State Council issued some opinions on speeding up the reform and development of supply and marketing cooperatives. Four years ago, I went to the rural areas of Loudi, Hunan Province to investigate the "Loudi model" of online supply and marketing cooperatives at that time. Now, a few years later, how is the e-commerce of the supply and marketing agency doing? Today, when we are talking about e-commerce in supply and marketing, can we repeat the road we have taken in the past five years?

Over the past five years, e-commerce has developed rapidly in China, and one of the most prominent changes is the accelerating trend of e-commerce mainstreaming. In 2008, China's online retail experienced several years of momentum, just reached the order of hundreds of billions of magnitude. Then, e-commerce is in full swing, and in just five years, by 2013, the scale of online retail in China has surpassed that of the United States to become the country with the largest transaction volume in the world. Last year, China's e-commerce continued to grow by more than 50 per cent to 2.8 trillion. Also last year, China accounted for four of the world's 10 largest internet companies by market capitalization, while the US held the other six, while Europe and Japan ranked outside the top 10. Therefore, we can proudly say that China has stood at the forefront of the field of e-commerce.

In recent years, the trend of e-commerce mainstreaming has been accelerating, which is mainly reflected in the fact that county e-commerce has begun to enter a comprehensive explosion period: Alibaba Group held the "first China County economy and Electronic Commerce Summit" in Hangzhou in July 2014. from 26 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government The secretaries and magistrates of the 176counties and cities got together (the second summit this year was attended by more than 1600 leaders from more than 400 counties and cities). Such a hot scene fully illustrates one thing: the spring of county e-commerce is coming! Why do the party and government leaders of counties and cities attach so much importance to e-commerce? If e-commerce is only a new transaction channel and sells more products through the network, it will not be the main agenda of county magistrates at all. Nowadays, in the era of mainstream e-commerce, e-commerce has been related to many issues, such as "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", employment, people's livelihood, poverty alleviation, regional main industries, urbanization, and even social stability, and has entered the agenda of leaders at all levels. E-commerce is no longer a tactical issue, but a strategic issue.

Today, five years later, at this moment, if supply and marketing cooperatives are still absent in the concepts and methods of e-commerce, then what we will lose will be strategic opportunities. In this regard, it is necessary to have a sense of urgency and new ideas.

The power of rural e-commerce

At present, the countryside has become a strategic location of e-commerce, of which three forces can not be ignored, and now these three forces work together.

1 the government

In May last year, the Ministry of Agriculture launched the deployment of information access to villages and households, and 22 counties in 10 provinces were selected to start the pilot work of information access. Not long ago, the Ministry of Agriculture went to Suichang to hold an on-the-spot meeting on the entry of information into villages and households; and the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce also decided to carry out e-commerce work in some areas throughout the country from 2014, and provide financial subsidies to selected provinces. This year, we will continue to step up efforts to carry out the second batch of demonstration projects for e-commerce to enter rural areas, expanding coverage to 200 counties. At the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Agriculture, the General Association of supply and Marketing Cooperation and the State Post Bureau jointly issued a number of opinions on promoting the development of rural logistics, aimed at improving the development level of rural logistics in China. In addition, the Poverty Alleviation Office of the State Council has also incorporated e-commerce poverty alleviation into the poverty alleviation policy system, which will greatly promote the development of rural e-commerce.

2 e-commerce company

Alibaba listed in the United States in September last year and released three major strategies since then: including rural strategy, cross-border strategy and cloud computing big data strategy. Ali's rural strategy plans to invest 10 billion yuan in rural areas to implement the "thousands of counties and villages" plan. Subsequently, JD.com also announced the "spark pilot, thousand counties start a prairie fire" plan, and said that JD.com county-level service centers will be rolled out across the country, and the number of service centers is expected to exceed 500 this year. In addition, e-commerce giants such as Dangdang, SUNING and No.1 store have also taken action.

3 local e-commerce service providers

Why the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Agriculture can go to Suichang to open on-the-spot meetings of rural e-commerce one after another, street network is the fundamental reason. Whether it is the street network in Zhejiang, the Century Village in Fujian, Le Cun Amoy in Shanxi, they have begun to go out of their respective provinces and to the whole country. This fully shows that rural e-commerce needs landing service providers, and the local e-commerce service providers to promote the development of rural e-commerce, the action is fast, but also beyond imagination.

In accordance with the deployment of existing agricultural and commercial departments, rural e-commerce is generally promoted by pilot demonstration and then popularized throughout the country, while pilot demonstrations are mostly from counties and rural areas with better development conditions in all aspects. E-commerce enterprises will also choose areas with better market conditions to take the lead in promoting. So, according to this step-by-step deployment, when can e-commerce cover poor areas? In addition, can the e-commerce poverty alleviation experience formed in rural areas with better conditions be applicable to poor areas? It is precisely out of this consideration that governments that assume social fair responsibilities, especially government agencies such as the Poverty Alleviation Office, need to seize the opportunity to launch new strategic arrangements, that is, to be based on the main battlefield of poverty alleviation, especially in state-level poverty alleviation counties and poverty-stricken areas, we should step up efforts to carry out poverty alleviation through e-commerce and gain experience to promote it as soon as possible, so as to speed up the pace of poverty alleviation of the poor in poor areas.

What should supply and marketing cooperatives do?

First of all, it should be clear that because the level of development of rural e-commerce is very different from place to place, it can even be said to be very different and extremely unbalanced. In developed areas, "Taobao Village" and "Taobao Town" have appeared for every household to set up shop online, while e-commerce in the western region has just begun to enter the introduction period. Therefore, supply and marketing cooperatives should develop e-commerce in rural areas across the country, no matter in terms of strategy or mode.

Secondly, at present, many main bodies are building the fulcrum system of e-commerce in rural areas, and their mainstream methods are to establish downlink channels to help farmers buy industrial products, and to build e-commerce service stations in the village. solve the problem that left-behind farmers will not place orders online and logistics delivery cannot reach their homes; build a support system for local rural service sites at the county level (and some at the township level at the same time). Then, open up the regional logistics from the county to the village.

Based on the current development trend of rural e-commerce, according to the characteristics of supply and marketing cooperatives, for the layout of supply and marketing rural e-commerce, I suggest that supply and marketing cooperatives must adopt the idea of open cooperation and jointly build a fulcrum system for sharing rural e-commerce. In the process of "joint vertical and horizontal", it is not that you want to play the leading role, you can play, the key is whether you can really play the leading role. If you have something to do, you can have a seat.

For supply and marketing cooperatives to carry out rural e-commerce business support, I have three suggestions: keep agricultural materials, open daily use, seize the agricultural chain. The reasons are as follows:

Agricultural commodities have their own particularity, and the sales model is different from general consumer goods, which is also an important reason why many e-commerce giants are willing to dabble in it, but they suffer from the lack of service resources and have not taken any major action for a long time (recently, the agricultural materials business of Ali and JD.com have been online). Supply and marketing cooperatives have been precipitated in this field for a long time, and the e-commerce operation of agricultural products with services will have a bright future. And the sales of ordinary commodities, whether the threshold or technical difficulty is low, coupled with the major e-commerce platforms are competing for this market cake, so the competition is quite difficult. If you can explore a new mode of operation so that supply and marketing e-commerce can provide users with better differentiated services and better shopping experience than industry giants such as Ali and JD.com, it is worth a try, otherwise there is no need to start a new stove and disperse resources. In addition, in terms of the introduction of agricultural products to cities, it is the area most worthy of intensive cultivation by supply and marketing cooperatives. Because the uplink of agricultural products is not a matter that can be solved simply by putting together funds, it needs a complete and efficient industrial chain and supply chain, and the cooperative resources that this industrial chain needs most are precisely the advantages of supply and marketing cooperatives.

To sum up, there are both challenges and opportunities for supply and marketing cooperatives to realize the transformation of e-commerce. It is suggested that supply and marketing cooperatives must judge the hour and size up the situation, grasp the changes, and change according to the situation. Supply and marketing cooperatives may not be able to play a leading role in rural markets in all places, not only that, but may even have to find a foothold in some places. However, if supply and marketing cooperatives can find sustainable development points based on their own advantages, they should be able to make a difference in the spring tide of rural e-commerce. At any time, we should keep in mind the mission of supply and marketing cooperatives and provide better services for farmers!