"Express to the countryside" activates the "blue sea" of agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

Yang Jing did not expect that the lotus root in the green mud in her hometown could still be sold online, and the business was surprisingly good. Like many young entrepreneurs, a few years ago, this post-80s young man returned from Guangdong to Chahe Town, his hometown in Honghu City, Hubei Province, and opened an online store, specializing in selling lotus root, water chestnut, lotus seed, lotus root and other local specialties, becoming the first batch of local rural e-commerce.

"if the express doesn't go to the countryside, how can we transport the lotus root here?" Today, his online store turnover has been close to 10 million yuan, people call him "Honghu lotus root king", Yang Jing's thriving career, an important factor is the rapid development of the express industry. Honghu lotus root is famous all over the country, covered with green mud to keep the lotus root fresh, but how to get the lotus root to customers as quickly as possible is very important, at this point, express plays an important role.

Yang Jing recalled to Newsweek: "it takes half a month to deliver lotus root from Honghu to Xizang in 2009." By the time the customer received it, the lotus root had rotted away, but now it only takes two or three days for Xizang's customers to eat the same fresh lotus root as the Honghu people on the table. " In his view, for fresh e-commerce, time determines the reputation of customers, and the quality of express service determines the survival of online merchants.

In 2014, the Central No. 1 document related to the express delivery industry for the first time, requiring the improvement of the rural logistics system, speeding up the development of modern warehousing and logistics facilities for major agricultural products in major producing areas, and improving the cold chain logistics system for fresh agricultural products. Yang Jing's story reflects from one side that the "last kilometer" problem of express delivery is not only the bottleneck restricting the rural network economy, but also the key to activating this sleeping market.

Express delivery promotes consumption interaction between urban and rural areas

In the view of the interviewees, express delivery to the countryside has unblocked the urban and rural markets and realized the interaction of consumption. taking the efficient transportation of fresh food and agricultural products as an example, it has not only promoted the development of rural local economy, but also created new opportunities for rural areas to increase income.

In Anhui Province, a reporter from look out Newsweek found that the old hens purchased from Tmall's website in Gongjiaqiao Town, Jing County, Anhui Province, which belong to the northern part of the mountain area in southern Anhui, can be received by reporters in Guangzhou through a frozen cold chain within 24 hours. Covers the local breeders on-site chicken capture, cleaning, vacuum packaging, express delivery and other links.

The store staff said that urban residents have higher and higher requirements for ecological food, thanks to express delivery to the countryside, the original ecological products located in rural areas can be easily transported to urban customers. Although the price is not cheap, nearly a thousand have been sold through this channel.

The same is true in Maoming City, Guangdong Province, where litchi, which is rich in litchi, is turning cheap sales in previous years into high-profit express delivery through express delivery and e-commerce.

"take the varieties of sugar mackerel as an example, the lowest purchase price in previous years was about 2 yuan per catty, but this year it has reached more than 4 yuan per catty." Ye Fushan, party committee secretary of Genzi Town, Gaozhou City, the first town of litchi in China, said that this year, Shun Feng Express and Benzhou.com alone bought 100000 jin of litchi to sell to the whole country, and through the time advantage of express delivery, not only promoted Gaozhou, but also developed a high-end market.

Express delivery to the countryside to activate the rural economy at the same time, more and more rural areas also began to benefit from its efficient, convenient, low-cost logistics. Farmers, like urban residents, can buy goods online, which is much cheaper than buying goods from merchants after reducing many circulation links.

Take the aerator necessary for farmers to raise fish as an example. This kind of product generally costs 300 to 400 yuan to buy in physical stores, but only more than 100 yuan to buy online. The emergence of e-commerce in rural areas has improved the living standards of farmers and greatly reduced the cost of production.

Not only that, express delivery also gave birth to new business type in the countryside. In rural areas, farmers are still at the beginning of the era of online shopping, and there is a lack of online shopping information. For this reason, some local young people who come back from working in the eastern region invented the "online generation" new business type, which charges 5 yuan per item to advance online shopping according to farmers' orders.

The era of rural e-consumption has just begun, and there is still great potential for growth in the future. in October 2014, Alibaba Research Institute released the Rural E-commerce consumption report, which counted a number of rural e-consumption data: in the previous three years, Taobao's share of rural consumption continued to rise, from 7.11% in the second quarter of 2012 to 9.11% in the first quarter of 2014. It is estimated that the market size will reach 180 billion yuan in 2014, and the total rural online shopping market is likely to exceed 460 billion yuan in 2016. In addition, 84.6 percent of rural netizens used mobile phones to surf the Internet in 2013, 5 percentage points higher than in cities and towns.

The first-mover advantage of EMS in rural market

In the view of Ma Junsheng, director of the State Post Bureau, the volume of rural express delivery in China was almost negligible in the past, but this year's sampling statistics have accounted for 10% of the total. In the future, the development speed of rural express will be much faster than that of urban e-commerce.

According to our reporter's understanding, at present, in the rural express delivery business structure, 90% of the rural areas purchase urban industrial products and 10% of the agricultural products are sold to the cities. Express delivery reduces the multi-layer links of the circulation of consumer goods, and the proportion of agricultural products sold through express channels is expected to expand in the future.

Under this trend, at the beginning of this year, China's postal administration clearly defined the important direction and strategic objectives for the development of the express delivery industry, and launched the projects of "express delivery to the countryside" and "express delivery to the west". Enterprises are encouraged to speed up network layout and infrastructure construction in rural areas and central and western regions, and improve network coverage and stability.

Ma Junsheng commented that starting the "express delivery to the countryside" project can enable the broad masses of farmers to enjoy online shopping services as soon as possible, and promoting the "express westward" project can improve the regional balance. The advance of express delivery to the countryside and westward has brought a lot of benefits to local farmers.

In spite of this, express delivery to the countryside also faces some difficulties. On the one hand, most of the young and middle-aged workers in China's rural areas go to work in cities, and few return to the entrepreneurs, while most of the elderly and children left behind in rural areas do not have a high income and low purchasing power, so they still need time to cultivate demand. On the other hand, the logistics cost between rural areas is high, and the outlets of most express delivery companies stop at the township level. Some express outlets not only need express storage, but also need to operate a variety of businesses such as tobacco and alcohol beverage sales, otherwise it is difficult to maintain.

In this context, the postal system, which has the largest postal network in China, especially in rural areas, has a new space for development. At present, the postal system has 118000 outlets across the country-including village postal stations, rural areas and farmers service stations, community service stores, and even the most remote mountain villages in China.

For this reason, Alibaba signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with China Post in June 2014 to carry out comprehensive and in-depth cooperation with China Post in logistics, e-commerce, finance, information security and other fields to build China's intelligent logistics backbone network.

Of course, if the two sides want to really invigorate resources and tap the potential of the rural electronic consumer market, they must first solve how to effectively coordinate between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises and put their strategies into the field. Take China Post as an example, the cooperation between its mechanism and pure market-oriented Alibaba may face many constraints.

This is not without precedent. As early as 2006, China Post signed the first strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba to launch e-commerce exclusive express services such as E-Mail. But merchants on Taobao's Tmall platform use less than 5 per cent of the postal system, while 95 per cent of deliveries are done by companies such as the non-postal system.

Before that, when Ma Junsheng was doing research in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, he also found that within half a year of the "going to the countryside" project, the express delivery company had already gone deep into almost every local township and township. "We are still working hard to mobilize the replacement and construction of our blank township bureau." other people's market-driven private express has arrived. "

He said: private enterprises are very practical and realistic, and if they fail to operate in three months, they will certainly "withdraw their troops." But now I can not only live, but also live well. One of the important reasons is that these companies can deeply cultivate the rural market and develop farmers' online shopping, mainly including clothes, shoes, agricultural production tools, and so on. On average, each item is dozens to hundreds of yuan cheaper than before. In several local townships, five major express delivery enterprises have set up locations, with more than 1000 pieces purchased online every day.

Public delivery platform needs to be improved urgently.

The interviewed experts pointed out that the "express delivery to the countryside" project still needs policy guidance and financial support from the government to achieve good results. The infrastructure of the express industry in rural areas basically starts from scratch. In the future, on the basis of fully understanding the needs of express enterprises, we should integrate various express enterprises, social transport forces and all kinds of network resources to carry out systematic and overall planning.

They said that many remote areas and rural areas are sparsely populated, transportation is inconvenient, and the volume of business is relatively small, so it is obviously uneconomical for express companies to lay out outlets and distribution personnel. For this reason, through the construction of public delivery platform, we can improve the coverage of rural express distribution network and meet the growing market demand. At the same time, we can give full play to economies of scale, reduce rural distribution costs, and achieve express delivery to the countryside. In practice, meticulous planning should be carried out in accordance with local conditions and rural characteristics.

First, encourage active exploration and innovation, based on public service platforms such as rural comprehensive service stations, village post stations, rural bookhouses, village committees, supply and marketing cooperatives, and provide relatively perfect express delivery services to residents in rural areas through entrusted agencies. and open to all express delivery enterprises. This not only reduces the cost of express delivery in rural areas, solves the problem of weak service capacity of express delivery services in rural areas, but also opens up new sources of income for these public service platforms.

The second is to integrate all kinds of transport resources in rural areas. Make full use of the rural bus lines, freight, and agricultural vehicles of the transportation departments to promote cooperation between express delivery enterprises and transportation departments, and use these rural transport vehicles to carry express parcels, which not only increases the income of transport vehicles, but also reduces the transportation costs of express delivery enterprises to achieve win-win cooperation.

The third is to superimpose the function of online shopping services on the rural public service platform to guide and stimulate consumption in rural areas and provide a source of demand for express delivery services.