Perspective on the Dream and anxiety of Rural E-commerce

Walking on the country road, the farmhouse's courtyard wall "Taobao" is busy. From JD.com and Taobao to painting walls in villages to major e-commerce businesses in the countryside to open shops, in the past few years, e-commerce enterprises have set off a new round of "going to the mountains and going to the countryside" craze, and rural e-commerce has sprung up everywhere.

E-commerce is deeply changing the way of production and life in rural areas, and plays an important role in activating domestic demand and promoting the coordinated development of urban and rural areas.

Can e-commerce become a new engine of rural economic development? How to build a good rural e-commerce ecology? The reporter recently conducted a survey in many rural areas throughout the country and found that this is already a common thinking problem in the e-commerce circle.

Invigorate the rural market and open up a new world of wealth creation

These days, at the village Amoy service station at Jingxing Farm in Helan County, Ningxia, Li Wei, a "village waiter," helps villagers buy goods online, while trying to find a way to sell farm rice online. Xu Weihui, a villager waiting for shopping, told reporters that he had bought noodle presses, bean sprouts and small rice grinders online and placed orders online, which could be delivered in three or four days. Some villagers took advantage of the online promotion to buy a car, which is more than 70,000 yuan cheaper than the 4S store.

The shopping experience of high quality, cheap, convenient and rich categories has activated the demand for online shopping in the rural market. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, the size of the rural online shopping market reached 353 billion yuan in 2015, an increase of 96 percent over the same period last year. The size of the rural online shopping market reached 312 billion yuan in the first half of this year and is expected to reach 647.5 billion yuan for the whole year.

In the past two years, when the penetration rate of urban online shopping has been nearly saturated, e-commerce enterprises such as Ali, JD.com, SUNING and other e-commerce enterprises have taken landing in the rural market as a new strategy. By the end of 2015, 250000 e-commerce village-level service points had been built in 1000 counties across the country.

According to the "Taobao Village Research report of China (2016)" jointly released by Ali Research Institute and Ali New Rural Research Center, by the end of August this year, there were 1311 Taobao villages in China, creating more than 840000 direct employment opportunities.

In some places, e-commerce has become an important direction for grassroots entrepreneurship, getting rid of poverty and becoming rich. Driven by Ren Qingsheng, the leader of e-commerce entrepreneurship in Dinglou Village, Daji Town, Cao County, Shandong Province, more than 90% of the 306 families in the village opened online stores at home to sell performance costumes, attracting a large number of young people to return home to start their own businesses. In 2015, the village's e-commerce sales are conservatively estimated at 100 million yuan, with a net profit as high as 30%.

The wealth effect created by e-commerce in Dinglou Village has an impact on the surrounding villages. In 2016, online merchants in Cao County opened more than 20, 000 online stores, with e-commerce sales of nearly 2.5 billion yuan, directly lifting more than 4000 poor people out of poverty.

With the rapid infiltration of e-commerce into rural areas, traditional industries are also full of new vitality. Hebei Baigou, which is famous for its luggage manufacturing, has rapidly become one of the local pillar industries by developing e-commerce through the traditional industrial base. In 2015, the e-commerce transaction volume reached 7 billion yuan, 15000 online stores, and the average daily shipment exceeded 150000 units, making it a famous Taobao town in the country.

There is still "congenital deficiency" in the huge space of tapping potential.

The major e-commerce companies have gone to the countryside to "horse race enclosure", taking a fancy to the huge market that still needs to be developed. As of June this year, China had 191 million rural Internet users, and the Internet penetration rate was only 31.7 percent, far lower than the 67.2 percent penetration rate in cities and towns. Analysts believe that in the next 10 years, a large number of farmers will enter the network, and the scale of online shopping will maintain the momentum of growth.

However, with the increasing popularity of rural e-commerce, some problems and challenges have gradually emerged.

Infrastructure construction such as logistics is still a deficiency. The reporter found that at present, in addition to the own logistics system of some large e-commerce platforms, the secondary logistics network suitable for rural characteristics has not yet been formed, which is generally characterized by high logistics costs and lagging development of cold chain logistics.

"after fresh Chinese wolfberry is on the market this year, Qi Nong wants us to help sell it online. The purchase price of a jin of fresh Chinese wolfberry is only 10 yuan, but a courier fee is 80 yuan. Fresh Chinese wolfberry must be delivered within three days, and only Shunfeng dares to take this order. " Guo Jing, head of county e-commerce service center in Yongning County, Ningxia, said that some rural e-commerce demonstration counties are setting up county, township and village three-level logistics systems, but most of them are supported by subsidies.

It is easier to buy than to sell, and the uptrend of agricultural products is "big thunder but little rain". Mo Wenjian, chairman of Jilin Yunfei he Wu Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Technology Co., Ltd., admitted that most agricultural products do not have the basic conditions to become "online goods." Lack of brand, no quality control, lack of after-sales, "upstream" is not easy.

From the point of view of the whole country, there are many kinds of agricultural products, the degree of standardization is low, and most of them are in the rough processing stage; there are few agricultural products with quality certification, and the "three products and one standard" agricultural products are mixed with fish eyes, and the promotion and application of traceability means is not enough.

Industry insiders believe that the uplink of agricultural products needs a service system that integrates product control, logistics and design research and development, marketing and promotion, which has not yet been formed.

"one side of a thousand networks", homogenization competition is serious. Rural e-commerce has changed from a 'blue sea' to a 'sports red sea'. E-commerce converges investment and repeated construction, resulting in a waste of human, financial and material resources. " Hong Tao, director of the Institute of Business Economics at Beijing Industrial and Commercial University, said that this will inevitably lead to serious homogenization competition, loss-making operation, and the coexistence of shop building and shop closure.

During the interview, the reporter also found that in some pilot counties with earlier layout of rural e-commerce, the effect of many village-level service stations invested in the early stage was not ideal, and the survival rate was low. Partners said frankly that the pressure of competition is great, and it is easier to open a shop than to keep it.

Divergence, avoid sameness, do not rush for success.

How to get to the road of rural e-commerce? Grass-roots government managers and e-commerce practitioners generally believe that the first thing to do is to nibble on the hard bone of "agricultural products going up".

"at present, rural e-commerce should focus on personnel training, regional public brand building, online goods research and design, traceability and the whole process of quality control system construction, public service platform construction and so on." Mo Wenjian said that on these basis, the upstream of agricultural products needs to achieve base planting + field experience + worry-free supply chain guarantee + visual quality control system + e-commerce operation + service guarantee.

At the fourth Taobao Village Summit Forum held a few days ago, Wei Yanan, head of the Agriculture and Industry Department of the Shaanxi Provincial CPC Committee of the Communist Youth League, proposed that Taobao village needs directional training at a certain stage of development, and can not grow savagely and compete with homogenization.

The first China Rural Electronic Commerce Development report recently released by the Research Institute of China International Electronic Commerce Center points out that the future trend is that some agriculture-related e-commerce enterprises will begin to change from retailers to distributors and from simple channel merchants to brands. from raw material procurement to design, looking for manufacturers to contract, and finally distribute the goods to other small online merchants Gradually establish an e-commerce vertical industrial chain with brands, wholesalers and retailers as the main body.

"the development of rural e-commerce should be based on the county industrial foundation, not out of thin air; the original traditional industries should realize the information transformation with the help of the development tide of rural e-commerce." Qiu Jie, secretary general of Ningxia Electronic Commerce Association, said that the common development of the real economy and e-commerce will form the effect of flying on both wings.

What is noteworthy is that at present, more and more rural e-commerce sellers have cooperated with offline physical sellers to expand sales channels. Some e-commerce platforms help physical enterprises achieve e-commerce transformation, sell products and services to the whole country, and participate in higher-level market competition.

There are also many industry experts and grass-roots cadres remind that the development of rural e-commerce can not "run too fast", it is necessary to steadily move forward, starting from a "small goal" to create a good rural e-commerce ecology. For example, at this stage, we should not rush for "full coverage" at the county, township and village levels, but should pay attention to the "survival rate"; we should give full play to the effectiveness of the return-to-hometown entrepreneurship policy and e-commerce training to train more local e-commerce talents.