Six forces to compete for rural e-commerce

The vigorous rural e-commerce movement has entered its third year, and it is difficult to realize the initial beautiful vision. On the contrary, the strength of all parties participating in the rural e-commerce battle is growing day by day, and there is a trend of "attracting countless heroes to bend over". In addition to the "soldiers" of e-commerce giants represented by Alibaba, JD.com and SUNING, there was also a high-profile entry of the "national team" represented by China Post, the General supply and Marketing Co-operative, and China Telecom. the local tuhao "Tiger Dragon Plate" represented by Zhejiang Chunjie, Shanxi Lecun Amoy and Shenzhen Amoy, and the agriculture-related listed enterprises represented by Kim Jong-da, Huifeng Agriculture and Nuopxin promoted the collective uproar of agricultural e-commerce. With the emergence of new farmers and the formation of WeChat business platform as the symbol of the "quiet rise" of rural special WeChat business, it is inevitable that the major e-commerce service providers "attack in all directions", and become the busiest group in the rural e-commerce movement. These six forces are deepening the construction of the development model and the division of power territory of rural e-commerce in the process of competition and integration, of course, they are also promoting the continuous development of rural e-commerce.

1. The e-commerce giants represented by Alibaba, JD.com and SUNING began to "change their formation" in the "soldiers' advance".

From the initial launch of the affectionate "Thousand Counties and villages" plan to the launch of version 3.0 of rural Taobao in July 2016, Alibaba's rural e-commerce strategy has become increasingly plump. If we say that rural Taobao 1.0 is based on the existing rural commercial system, then version 2.0 has raised talents to the first element, and launched a "solid but not solid" rural Taobao partners to be openly recruited, with a marked increase in vitality. To version 3.0, it is obvious from simple e-commerce to rural e-commerce ecological building and service evolution, with rural Taobao, Taobao village as the dual core, talent training, financial access to the countryside, tourism online, uplink access and other sectors support, from simple online merchandise trading to a comprehensive rural Internet economy.

JD.com 's rural e-commerce strategy, originally known as the "Qianxian Liaoyuan" plan, infiltrated below the county through the "two-legged" walk of JD.com and JD.com county-level service centers. In the second half of 2015, proposed by Liu Qiangdong, his rural strategy was gradually finalized into a "3F" strategy, that is, industrial products to the countryside strategy (FactorytoCountry), agricultural products into cities strategy (FarmtoTable) and rural financial strategy (FinancetoCountry). Because the English initials of the three strategies all have "F", they are named to effectively make up for the weakness of simple e-commerce going to the countryside.

SUNING's rural e-commerce strategy was not officially launched until January 2015, mainly to upgrade its township-level stores to SUNING service stations, which is still a downward extension of its inherent O2O model to rural areas. Since then, Zhang Jindang, the head of SUNING, personally advocated and studied rural e-commerce, and finally formed a new "three modernizations and five dang" model, that is, the "three modernizations" vision of agricultural industrialization, the branding of agricultural products, and the specialization of talents, and the "Wudang model" of "local sales, local taxes, local services, local employment, and local wealth creation." it can be said to be highly targeted and attractive to local governments.

In a short period of more than two years, such drastic changes have taken place in the rural e-commerce strategies of the giants, which fully shows that the rural e-commerce is developing rapidly and the situation is changing rapidly. the "rural" characteristics of rural e-commerce are getting stronger and more approachable.

2. The "national team" represented by China Post, head Office of supply and Marketing and China Telecom joined the rural e-commerce competition in a high profile.

First of all, "Postmaster" has joined the competition of rural e-commerce since 2014, relying on Postal Music Network, its own platform and its rural operating terminal "Postmaster" system, to infiltrate downward along its sound rural network. By the end of 2015, it had completed the coverage of 110000 villages. Judging from this action, the "postmaster" 's attitude towards rural e-commerce is serious. If we can effectively encourage its huge team of rural postmen and carry out an open transformation of the terminal distribution system of rural logistics, it is entirely possible to get a piece of the pie in rural e-commerce.

After China Post, the head office of supply and marketing also entered rural e-commerce in 2015 with a high profile. In the reform of supply and marketing cooperatives in 2015, the central government gave new powers to supply and marketing cooperatives, that is, e-commerce and finance, and with financial support, which greatly increased their strength and had a feeling of entering the market with a "imperial sword". Then spent a lot of money to build the "supply and marketing E" online operation. But unfortunately, the experience of "supply and marketing E" does not seem to be satisfactory, and the idea that an e-commerce platform can undertake B2B, B2C, 020 and other online functions at the same time is also questioned, because Jack Ma can't do it either.

The network is the foundation for the development of rural e-commerce. When rural e-commerce is advancing by leaps and bounds, several major telecom operators also enjoy dividends. China Telecom does not seem to be satisfied with this, upgrading its rural telecom service point to e-commerce service point from "serving people" to "doing it directly", as well as upgrading its B2C e-commerce website 114MALL. However, this platform system is still relatively open, in the pilot in Qinghai, its grass-roots e-commerce service point is more like a purchasing agent service point, each platform can be an agent, each payment means can be selected, not just telecom "wing payment".

3. The local e-commerce Tuhao "Tiger Dragon Plate" represented by Zhejiang Chunjie, Shanxi Le Cun Amoy and Shenzhen Amoy Shihui

Although Zhejiang Qijie started in Suichang in the west of Zhejiang Province, as the earliest explorer of rural e-commerce, its pace of exploration and improvement never stopped. The original version inspired Alibaba's rural Taobao, which expanded to thousands of villages in 10 provinces in 2015. However, with the superficial expansion, it also brings a series of problems such as the adaptability and sustainability of the model, so they slow down the pace of expansion and begin to ponder the deep-seated problems, and the local online and offline integration has become an important exploration direction.

Shanxi's Le Cun Amoy is another restless "tuhao". In less than three years, it has expanded to 25 provinces across the country, covering 65000 villages. Their public singing model is also O2O. In particular, the invention of "Le 6 episodes" is more innovative. On the 6th, 16th and 26th of each month, centralized orders, centralized sales and centralized distribution can reduce the logistics and procurement costs of rural e-commerce.

Amoy Shihui, headquartered in Shenzhen, made a loud slogan of "county self-ecology", wanted to build a rural e-commerce service platform instead of buying and selling by itself, and proposed to build five major enabling systems that serve the county and network logistics, finance, supply chain, IT and management, in order to make the local economy develop better, and has so far expanded to several provinces.

4. Listed agriculture-related enterprises represented by Kim Jong-da, Huifeng Agriculture and Nuopxin promote the collective uproar of agricultural e-commerce.

In the spring of 2015, Lenovo's investment in Cloud Farm opened another fiercely competitive area of rural e-commerce-agricultural e-commerce. Originally, the rural e-commerce business of the major e-commerce platforms designed the agricultural material e-commerce plate, but Lenovo's investment behavior directly aroused the collective uproar of the major agriculture-related listed enterprises, invested in rural e-commerce one after another, and gave birth to several agricultural e-commerce platforms.

For example, Kim Jong-da, in conjunction with the China Agricultural Industry Development Fund and Modern seed Industry Development Fund Co., Ltd., set up Agricultural Merchants No. 1 in a high profile, with an investment of 2 billion yuan in the first phase, preparing to expand to 1000 counties in three to five years.

Nopsson promoted its field circle to launch the "Field Circle Internet Alliance". In addition to the O2O service platform, it also launched agricultural collection network (B2B), agricultural development loan (P2P), logistics, agricultural products sales and other platforms to build an agricultural Internet ecosystem. Huifeng shares invested in Nongyi Network, highlighted pesticide products, and initially realized the online ecological construction of computer-end pesticide mall online trading system, mobile phone APP, mobile touch screen version and micro mall system.

According to incomplete statistics, in addition to Kim Jong Da, Huifeng shares, and Nuopxin, the listed companies involved in agricultural e-commerce also include Huilong Agricultural Materials, Xinyang Fengfeng Industry, Agricultural products, Sirte, New Austria shares, Bartian shares, New Hope, Beidahuang, and so on. However, the common characteristics of these listed enterprises involved in agricultural e-commerce are strong platform thinking and self-formed system, and their openness determines their future space, otherwise the e-commerce plate will always be useless, and it will be very difficult to make a profit. moreover, the particularity of agricultural materials determines that the competition of agricultural materials e-commerce also depends on the competition of offline agricultural materials market.

5. Agricultural and special WeChat businesses marked by the emergence of new farmers and the formation of WeChat business platform are "quietly rising".

In mid-2015, a case of disfigurement caused by the sale of fake masks on Wechat moments was heard, and the seller of masks was sentenced. Since then, the first generation of violent hoarding WeChat businesses began to decline, while the agricultural WeChat businesses represented by the sale of characteristic agricultural products took over the baton and broke out rapidly. Why is that? An important reason is that agricultural products are non-standardized, which happens to take advantage of Wechat's social genes to alleviate the demanding standardization in strangers' transactions on the basis of forming the trust of acquaintances. Agricultural products are full of moments.

Not only that, after a simple and rough stage, WeChat business began to become a platform, with likes, quantities and other WeChat platforms, which no longer need to brush the screen violently, do not need layers of hoarding and are close to pyramid selling, and only need a backstage open system. Can achieve a generation, and the agency level is generally controlled within the second level, increasingly transparent and standardized.

Based on the research results of Ali Research Institute and various data analysis, about 2 million young people at and below the county level have returned to engage in Internet agriculture, generally using tools such as online stores, WeChat merchants and Weibo. At present, this force is still very fragmented and weak, but the trend of development should not be underestimated. It has become another active factor in rural e-commerce, and it is increasingly showing a trend of convergence. Bi Huifang, Simba, hard-working farmer elder brother, Tudou sister and other new peasant representatives have increasingly expanded their influence in rural e-commerce.

6. E-commerce service providers who go to the countryside at the same time with the major e-commerce companies are attacking in all directions.

Rural e-commerce, relying solely on e-commerce platform can not work, nor can the government, e-commerce must go to the countryside together with e-commerce service providers. Therefore, in the process of the development of rural e-commerce, e-commerce service providers have increasingly become the focus of attention, some of which have become the guests of the county magistrate, the allies of rural e-commerce and the leaders of rural e-commerce entrepreneurs.

For example, Pan Dongming's team, who rushed to the streets, is one of the service providers and undertakes a large number of e-commerce service functions of the government. Wang Junlong's team in Lishui has already had a lot of influence from e-commerce personnel training to rural e-commerce integrated services. however, behind the developed county e-commerce in Zhejiang, we can vaguely see Yu Bin, Wang Wenhui and other e-commerce service providers. The county e-commerce Tongyu model operated by Mo Wenjian team from Zhejiang pushes e-commerce service providers to the foreground and leads the design and implementation of rural e-commerce. In other provinces, there are the system services provided by Tian Jiangang's team to the uplink of agricultural e-commerce, and the service function of Xu Xiaobo's team to help the poor by Jiangxi e-commerce. There are Jeff e-commerce team serving Hubei county e-commerce, Hebei Shang Yonghua team operated by deep ploughing e-commerce park, and Wang Xuelian team stuck in Gansu.

With the further development of rural e-commerce, the problem of uplink homogeneous competition of agricultural products is becoming more and more obvious, and brand strategy has been paid more and more attention. Jia Xiao, an agricultural consultant team full-time engaged in county agricultural product brand planning, has been rapidly active in all parts of the country since 2015. The Hu Xiaoyun team of the Agricultural Brand Research Center of Zhejiang University, the Li Zhiqi team and the Fulai Marketing Lou Xiangpeng team, which have been engaged in agricultural brand research and service for a long time, have also been invited into the e-commerce circle to provide e-commerce brand services. The brand must be accompanied by communication. The former CCTV reporter Xue Qian and the former Southern Department Hu Haiqing team from the media have also participated in the publicity planning and event marketing design of rural e-commerce, and there are classic cases.

With rural e-commerce, there is also rural e-commerce training, the situation can be described as hot, almost every e-commerce service provider is organizing training, starting with concept guidance and personnel training, not only for entrepreneurs, but also for local leaders and enterprise bosses, after the first county e-commerce county magistrate class in Taobao University, e-commerce training for leading cadres around the country is very popular. The county e-commerce training of JD.com and SUNING also followed up. The county e-commerce alliance under the China Electronic Commerce Association, Bantang Business School in Anhui, and the Green Ye Academy being built in Shaanxi have also joined the ranks of rural e-commerce training. Do not do e-commerce planning, e-commerce planning is often followed up after training, relevant experts and institutions are also busy.

It can be expected that with the deepening of rural e-commerce strategy, more and more local governments and business people realize that the importance of e-commerce service providers is growing day by day, and there is still a lot of room for development in the future.

All in all, with the development of rural e-commerce, with the continuous increase of scale and the deepening of models, especially the continuous development of rural e-commerce ecology, more and more forces are needed to participate in it. In addition to the six forces that can be seen at present, there are other forces that have entered the field of rural e-commerce. For example, traditional retail enterprises in some counties have used e-commerce tools to explore the integrated development of online and offline. All of these participation will make rural e-commerce more colorful. The only wish is that all forces in the competition and integration of rural e-commerce can finally be reflected by the tangible benefits of farmers.