E-commerce still lacks understanding of rural areas and is rife with fraud and compensation.

Looking out through the front window, there is a narrow and muddy natural road flanked by near-mature cornfields. Zhao Gang (a pseudonym), a distributor of vertical B2B agricultural e-commerce sitting in front, looked back with difficulty: "there is a nickname on this road called rain. Fortunately, the rain is relatively light today, otherwise we will have to walk into the village on foot."

After a bumpy ride of about twenty minutes, a small convenience store without a name appeared at the end of the road. The wall of this lonely store is occupied by billboards and slogans such as "Caojiagou e-commerce service station", "Jinsui Huinongtong" and "China supply and Marketing Cooperative". On the wall of the public toilet are: "getting rich depends on work, diligence and frugality depends on JD.com" and "sales, hundreds of degrees".

This is now a common scene in rural areas, and behind these slogans and small convenience stores is the rural dream of Chinese Internet companies such as Alibaba and JD.com.

The ultimate goal of Alibaba's village Amoy is to achieve a "smart countryside", solving the multiple functions including buying and selling, looking for a job, and even relying on the Ali platform to complete medical care and tourism. JD.com sent "running chicken" and "finance, fresh, mall and other departments" to the countryside, trying to create a closed loop of production and marketing on the "JD.com running chicken" project. In addition to the e-commerce platform, Internet giants such as Baidu and NetEase spread marketing in the rural market by painting the wall.

"are these all free?" When he heard about the super plan of Village Amoy, Zhao Gang was silent for a moment and then asked. In fact, during visits to various places, Tencent Technology found that Zhao Gang's doubts represent that there is still widespread demand dislocation and information asymmetry between Chinese farmers and major e-commerce platforms.

The ant soldier behind the confrontation between the two heroes

The two biggest players in the rural e-commerce market are Alibaba's Cun Tao and JD.com, and around these two giants, it revolves around the pursuers represented by SUNING and Gome (Weibo), as well as pure rural e-commerce represented by street-driving networks and buying and selling treasures.

In 2014, Alibaba and JD.com laid out rural e-commerce successively.

On the eve of Alibaba's listing in the United States, Jack Ma (Weibo), chairman of Ali Group, led a team to visit the headquarters of rural e-commerce street network, and successively sent several waves of Ali executives and experts to make field visits. After listing in the United States, Alibaba clearly put forward agriculture-related e-commerce as one of the key development directions in the future, and announced in October 2014 to launch the "Thousand Counties and villages Plan", a rural strategy, which will invest 10 billion yuan in the next three to five years. 1000 county-level service centers and 100000 village-level service stations were established; at the end of the same year, relevant leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture inspected JD.com and pointed out that JD.com 's agricultural e-commerce should be piloted. JD.com rural e-commerce related projects were established in March 2015, and the rural e-commerce channel was launched on August 11, 2015. the main categories are seeds, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, agricultural machinery and tools.

According to data provided by Ali, as of August 2016, rural Taobao had landed in 29 provinces, opened more than 300 county-level service centers, nearly 18000 village sites, and had nearly 20, 000 rural Taobao partners and helpers.

From Ali's point of view, the development of rural e-commerce must give full play to the advantages of e-commerce, realize the two-way circulation function of "online goods to the countryside" and "agricultural products to the city", and attract talents to return to start a business, so as to realize a modern and intelligent "intelligent countryside".

JD.com, SUNING, Gome and others enter the rural market by relying on their leading advantages in commodities, especially in the home appliance industry. Data from market research institutions show that in 2012, the rural market of the TV industry overtook the urban market for the first time, accounting for more than 50%. In recent years, the scale of urban home appliance market has been declining compared with the same period last year, while the scale of rural market has maintained growth.

A number of pure agricultural e-commerce represented by the street network aim at direct cooperation with relevant government departments, and the category is more focused on the e-commerce of the original brands in rural areas, rather than simply going down to the rural areas.

2C or 2B, the choice is not easy.

It is nothing new that Liu Qiangdong (Weibo) has a local complex. According to people in the circle, JD.com will give priority to the rural background when recruiting employees. Wang Xiaosong, president of JingDong Fresh, said directly: "in the future, a lot of room for e-commerce will come from the rural market. If this area is not started, the development of e-commerce will soon encounter a bottleneck."

Entering the rural market, e-commerce giants have gone through a short but rather tortuous process. Since 2013, the growth rate of the domestic e-commerce market in large and medium-sized cities began to slow down, and the e-commerce giants turned their attention to the undeveloped rural market. At this time, the main means is to paint the wall on a large scale and put into regional television stations and radio advertisements. At this stage, the main goal of e-commerce is to open awareness, but restricted by logistics, payment and other supporting conditions, after the brand is reached, the downward trend of goods is not easy.

From the end of 2014, the e-commerce platform, which is aware of the problem, began to further precipitate the channel: SUNING adapted his more than 200 home appliance maintenance after-sales service stores scattered around the country. so that it can provide rural market consumers with services such as placing orders for customers, and use this as the site for the last kilometer of distribution, while Alibaba further extends the distribution network through its Cainiao network.

However, at present, the vast majority of e-commerce platforms are aimed at C-end users, which is not the main mode of rural retail network. Some data show that in recent years, in the circulation pattern of agricultural products in China, the wholesale market has always been "dominant", accounting for nearly 80% of the total circulation, the market market accounts for about 15%, and the supermarket is about 5%. In terms of commodity decline, according to the data provided by several supermarkets that mainly sell to villages and towns, three batches or more of the commodities received by farmers account for a considerable proportion, while some commodities that directly face farmers are often three products with no products.

According to the history of world agricultural development, in the 1930s in the United States, the European Union and Japan in the 1950s, these countries and regions with relatively developed market economies have encountered a series of economic and social problems caused by fluctuations in the agricultural products market, which forced them to take important steps in the construction of the market circulation pattern of agricultural products.

In China, with the needs of economic decline and supply-side reform, traditional agriculture is also leaping forward to modern agriculture, and the construction of a new pattern of market circulation of agricultural products is also an unavoidable obstacle. E-commerce channel has become an important means to build a new pattern of circulation.

This means that if the e-commerce platform represented by JD.com and Village Amoy directly connects consumers in terms of daily consumer goods, it will be strongly rebounded by local agents.

Rural areas, e-commerce, who is whose pills

In 2015, the State Council, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Post Office and other ministries have issued 13 important documents on the development of rural areas and e-commerce. Among them, there are four documents issued by the State Council directly on promoting the development of rural e-commerce, which shows the positioning of rural e-commerce into the national strategic development field of vision.

Data show that at present, the rural population has 900 million, of which the resident population is more than 600 million, and the home appliance market alone exceeds one trillion. Li Heming, head of JD.com 's rural e-commerce strategy, told Tencent Science and Technology that JD.com has signed strategic cooperation agreements with more than 50 prefecture-level cities and more than 200 counties in 8 provinces.

Compared with the traditional market, some categories represented by home appliances have more room for growth in the rural market. Represented by SUNING, covering the rural market through e-commerce can save the huge expenses of opening a shop, and there is no need to develop e-commerce in first-and second-tier cities and fall into the dilemma of online e-commerce and offline brick-and-mortar stores.

However, a new question is whether rural areas must welcome the entry of e-commerce.

Take what an e-commerce platform offered to Tencent Technology as an example: there was a young girl in Anhui who sold gourd seeds when she returned to her hometown and did a good job, which later affected the whole town to join. More than 100 households sold gourd seeds together.

The evaluation of the e-commerce platform on this matter is: what is lacking in rural areas today is not funds or policies, but people who understand science and people who know how to drive them to become rich. This is "the arrival of a single spark."

In the same story, Zhang Tao (a pseudonym), the head of a chain store in a fourth-tier city, told Tencent Technology: "this is a good story, but it has nothing to do with e-commerce, it depends more on the progress of society as a whole." Zhang Tao further explained to Tencent Technology that rural commercial circulation should not blindly rely on e-commerce, but should absorb the flattening of e-commerce, shorten the length of the commercial chain, and there will naturally be a drop in prices.

E-commerce, by contrast, is salivating over the vast rural market.

According to a set of data released by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics on March 16, the retail sales of social consumer goods in Beijing were 161.69 billion yuan from January to February, up 1% from the same period last year and 6.8% lower than the same period in 2015. this is a rare low in the history of social zero growth, while online retail sales grew by-10% year-on-year from January to February-also the first negative year-on-year growth.

According to data released by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics, from January to February 2015, online retail in Beijing increased by 62% compared with the same period last year, and the year-on-year growth was as high as 40.2%. These figures may mean that the e-commerce platform has gone from explosive growth to moderate growth in urban areas.

At present, e-commerce is highly competitive in cities. JD.com, SUNING and Gome are all winning the market at a loss, while many brands that rely on the Ali system are also in a period of fierce rise in marketing costs and slow growth in the number of users. Relatively speaking, the rural market has become an important booster that cannot be given up.

E-commerce still lacks understanding of rural areas.

According to several rural surveys visited by Tencent Technology, Alibaba and JD.com have established their brand awareness in rural areas, thanks to the advertising efforts of these platforms on mainstream satellite TV channels and going to the countryside to paint walls and push.

But beyond these advertising campaigns, large e-commerce platforms do not have a good reputation in rural areas. A small convenience store owner described JD.com as "expensive" to Tencent Technology. " The word to describe village Amoy is: "there are many fakes." Sadly, on the shelves of this convenience store, there are many copycat brands such as "good under" and "Yong Yong".

These are the practical problems encountered by large-scale e-commerce platforms in opening up the rural market. These teams set up with the core of urban rapid promotion do not understand the current situation in rural areas, nor do they know how to establish their own e-commerce channels in rural areas. are replicating the practice of opening up urban channels.

In addition, e-commerce has become accustomed to the price war, while the current rural groups are too sensitive to the price of e-commerce. Tencent Technology has seen a number of stores and sales channels play a game on the price of 1.2 cents. At present, there are two main channels for offline shopping in rural areas: one is the recent rise of village-to-village supermarket project, and the other is the traditional bazaar. The common feature of the two channels is that the price is cheap, generally lower than the city supermarket price, and even some lower than the e-commerce price.

In terms of the uplink of agricultural products, according to Tencent Science and Technology, most of the e-commerce platforms still maintain their inherent thinking and attach importance to traffic and popular styles. However, an agricultural expert told Tencent Science and Technology that agricultural products have always had a relatively fixed acquisition system and output, and their own profits are not high, and there is no way to do e-commerce "loss-making" promotional activities. some grain products also have to do relevant reserve work, which is not in line with e-commerce sales as the king of sales.

There are numerous elephants that cheat and make up for chaos.

What is more noteworthy is that rural e-commerce is by no means a pure land.

In the visit of Tencent science and technology to rural shops, it is found that village Amoy points and JD.com cooperation points are not uncommon. According to the information provided by Ali, the information channel for its cooperation with the government is: with the government to improve the entire hardware equipment for partners, to build a village-level service station in the village, each village service station will put a computer, a big screen, a shelf, as well as VR design, door decoration, as well as electricity and network access, as long as the partners come back alone, zero cost to start a business at home and serve their neighbors.

In another rural area based on JD.com, Tencent Technology found several small supermarkets that cooperate with JD.com. What they have in common is a computer and a large screen. According to the information provided by JD.com, this model is to broadcast advertisements for JD.com-related goods in the supermarket, the shopkeeper helps to place orders, and JD.com gives a certain amount of discount.

However, whether it is Village Amoy or JD.com, Tencent Technology did not find any actual orders during the visit. On the screen of a small supermarket, the owner's child was playing League of Legends; another supermarket turned the screen into a monitor; the screen of another store was turned off, and the shopkeeper admitted: "I can't use it, it costs electricity." In addition, these shopkeepers say there are few orders, because in the era of the popularity of smartphones, most users who really want to buy have already bought them in their own homes.

The question is, why is this model so popular?

Perhaps the reason for the popularity of this model is the statement made by Liu Qiangdong, CEO of JD.com Group, at the 2015 China (Sichuan) E-Commerce Development Summit: "now many e-commerce companies are cheating local subsidies with rural e-commerce. You can also ask that many e-commerce platforms have signed a lot of contracts with local provinces, signed by provincial governors and county magistrates, and asked for support funds."

According to Tencent Science and Technology, the project fund subsidy notice issued by a local government: the subsidy object is the construction of e-commerce platform, including industry vertical platform, logistics information service platform, life service e-commerce platform and other major supporting projects. The subsidy standard shall be no more than 50% of the total cost of equipment purchase, system development and application promotion of the platform project, and no more than 1 million yuan for a single project in principle.

In addition to government subsidies, some such as pyramid schemes and fraud have also put on the cloak of e-commerce and revived in rural areas. Take the recent rise of "my Free Network" in western Zhejiang as an example, this site is known as "you shop, he pays the bill". Its business model is to attract users with all goods free of charge, but the fee is charged first and then rebated according to the number of people pulled by users, suspected of multi-level pyramid schemes and illegal fund-raising. While some other e-commerce platforms that use this way even run away directly. In a certain place in Hebei, there was an e-commerce platform that signed a contract with a number of convenience stores to save 1500 yuan to get goods that needed 2000 yuan. After tasting the benefits in some convenience stores, the e-commerce platform sold money and ran away.

Finance may make more money than e-commerce itself.

Although rural e-commerce is still in its infancy, e-commerce platforms have chosen to extend their tentacles downwards, in addition to expanding the number of users, perhaps the layout of the financial sector is also an important reason.

According to a survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, only 27 percent of farmers can obtain loans from formal channels, and more than 40 percent of farmers with financial needs find it difficult to obtain loans. In the face of the difficulty of farmers' loans, the loan approval time of rural credit cooperatives, supply and marketing cooperatives and other institutions is long and slow, which is difficult to meet the financing needs of farmers. According to the data from the Internet Finance Blue Book of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the financial gap between agriculture, rural areas and farmers is as high as 3.05 trillion yuan.

On the other hand, some returning migrant workers and peasant college students who aim at starting e-commerce businesses also face the problem of financing difficulties. the development of some rural e-commerce entrepreneurs often do not get the effective support of financial institutions, and entrepreneurs mainly rely on their own funds when they start business. after the opening, the lack of liquidity is more prominent.

Wang Tao, the person in charge of Ant Financial Services Group, told Tencent Technology: "Village Amoy is an important entrance for us to develop rural finance." At present, Ant Financial Services Group provides three major types of financial services to "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" users: prosperous agricultural loan, prosperous agricultural insurance, and prosperous agricultural payment. By the end of June this year, nearly 6000 villages in 25 provinces and 250 counties had carried out rural loan business. Ant Financial Services Group has served more than 22 million "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" users and provided a total of about 280 billion yuan in financial support.

On the other hand, JD.com directly aimed at the industry. According to Hong Jie, head of rural finance in JD.com, "JD.com Finance provides 4500 yuan interest-free loans to each poor household, providing them with chicken seedlings, feed, quarantine, and other services. Through the mode of agricultural cooperatives and free breeding of poor households, JD.com is responsible for recycling and sales, and the county government and enterprises provide technical support to farmers, forming a closed loop of e-commerce poverty alleviation. JD.com plans to conduct a trial of 10, 000 free-range chickens in Wuyi County in 2016, which will be comprehensively promoted after summarizing the results. "