Analysis on Regional Development Model of Rural E-commerce

Ning WANG

Teaching Center of Zhejiang Radio & Television University, Hangzhou 310012, China

Abstract In recent years, rapid development of rural e-commerce has promoted the development and prosperity of rural economy to a great extent, and made more local governments encourage and support the development of local e-commerce, and actively explore e-commerce development model suitable for regional characteristics. In this paper, 9 kinds of regional development models of rural e-commerce are introduced simply. Moreover, it points out that regional development of rural e-commerce focuses on market innovation, and the development model is only a reference, not a direct application, in which the key of solving the problem is to do a good job in agricultural products up-going.

Key words Countryside, Electronic commerce, Region, Model

1 Rapid development of rural e-commerce

In recent years, rural e-commerce has obtained rapid development, and played an important role in leading the domestic demand of urban and rural consumption, reshaping industrial structure, and promoting harmonious development of urban and rural areas. More and more people of insight have come to realize the opportunities for the future development of rural e-commerce, and major enterprises have laid out rural e-commerce, and Alibaba, Jingdong and Suning all have regarded rural area as one of their future development strategies. Rural e-commerce indicates grafting various resources to serve the rural area through the network platform, to expand the rural information service business and service field, and make it become information service station for agriculture, countryside and peasants in townships, towns and villages. It is taken as entity terminal of rural e-commerce platform, is directly rooted in the countryside, and serves agriculture, countryside and peasants. It truely makes that the service of agriculture, countryside and farmers falls to the ground, and farmers become the biggest beneficiaries of the platform.

2015 was the first year of rural e-commerce, and the State Council and the state ministries and committees have promulgated policies on rural e-commerce in the year. In document No.1 of the central committee of 2015, it proposed enhancing rural e-commerce again, and 12 policy documents concerning rural e-commerce were issued by the State Council, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture. Meanwhile, local governments have also issued many documents on rural e-commerce or agricultural products e-commerce. After that, relevant policies to promote the development of rural e-commerce are issued every year. These related policies issued by government has injected great vitality into the development of rural e-commerce, promoted development of rural or agricultural products e-commerce, and helped to promote the rapid rise of e-commerce in rural area. Statistical data of the Ministry of Commerce displayed that national rural network retail sales in 2018 achieved 1 370 billion yuan, which increased by 30.4% than last year; network retail volume of agricultural products in China reached 230.5 billion yuan, which increased by 33.8% than last year. Rural e-commerce develops rapidly.

2 Introduction of regional development model of rural e-commerce

With rise and vigorous development of rural e-commerce, its development pattern has received extensive attention and discussion. At the initial stage of rural e-commerce, rural sellers often resorted to the existing larger and more perfect public platforms with high degree of concern, such as Taobao, Jingdong, and No.1 Shop. With the rapid increase of business volume and the impetus of huge demand, these public platform companies have taken the initiative to enter the rural e-commerce industry, led by Alibaba, Jingdong, Suning and other e-commerce enterprises. Moreover, regional e-commerce platforms joined in it, such as Ganjie, Lecuntao, and Taoshihui, and "national team" such as post office, supply and marketing also entered into it, and a vigorous campaign of electronics merchants going to the countryside started. So far, more than 300 000 village-level sites have been established. General model is establishing a site or agency in the village, and you can buy things online, and they are distributed to the village. You can also pay fees, buy tickets and obtain other services online[1].

With continuous enlargement of rural e-commerce scale, trading commodities are more extensive, and green agriculture features are more prominent. It causes that rural e-commerce is faced with logistics, fresh-keeping, personality consumption and other issues in the process of development. Therefore, development model of rural e-commerce further develops and evolves, and forms multi-faceted and deep-seated sales model from purely depending on public platform to entrusting e-commerce platform, self-building platform and off-line + on-line[2]. And the sellers of rural e-commerce have also moved from individual to cooperative collective mode, in which the development track of rural fresh e-commerce can clearly reflect the advantages brought by this change. Rural fresh e-commerce develops from the most basic B2C (business to consumer) model to latter F2C (farmer to consumer, direct farm supply) model, C2B (customer to business, customization by consumers) model, C2F (customer to factory, contract agriculture) model and CSA (community support for agriculture) model. The activity and prosperity of rural e-commerce has greatly promoted the development and prosperity of rural economy, and it also makes more local governments encourage and support development of local e-commerce, and actively explore e-commerce development model suitable for local characteristics[3]. There are 9 kinds of representative models.

2.1 Suichang model of ZhejiangBased on unique natural resources, e-commerce integrated service provider composed of Online Shop Association and Suiwang Company, and excellent and loose software and hardware environment for e-commerce, the "Suichang model" of service-driven county-level e-commerce development has been formed finally.

2.2 Lin’an model of ZhejiangIt developed from e-commerce of selling nuts, was driven by government, service environment, market subject and management subject, connected core industries closely, and took powerful Internet consumer market as driving force.

2.3 Tonglu model of ZhejiangTonglu is the "hometown of private express in China", and this is where Shentong, Yuantong, Zhongtong and Yunda originated. Depending on Hangzhou with the developed Internet, local express logistics has innate advantages, and it is reasonable to give priority to the development of rural e-commerce in Tonglu. Local government uses 1.5 yuan/piece of express subsidy to solve the "last kilometer" problem of rural logistics.

2.4 Shaji model of JiangsuShaji model is specific embodiment of modernization way of informatization driving industrialization, and industrialization promoting informatization in the countryside.

2.5 Tongyu model of JilinTaking "direct supply of origin" as core idea, advantage agricultural by-products achieve national direct network sales by the manner of "unified brand, standard, quality, packaging, operation, distribution, and after-sales".

2.6 Chengxian model of GansuThe case of "Chengxian model: a walnut-triggered poverty alleviation way for electric businessmen" is well-known all over the country. There are three main effects in the development of e-commerce: cherry effect, ecological effect and secretary effect.

2.7 Boxing model of ShandongBoxing County is "hometown of straw willow knitting in China", is selected as "national non-material cultural heritage", forms four characteristic Taobao village clusters relying on straw willow knitting, old coarse cloth, furniture made of rattan and wood and kitchenware, and becomes national important Taobao village cluster and e-commerce base.

2.8 Qinghe model of HebeiQinghe County has the developed economy, and characteristic economy is cashmere products, and it is known as the "capital of cashmere in China". There is a saying that "the world cashmere sees China, and the Chinese cashmere sees Qinghe". Relying on traditional advantage industries, Qinghe e-commerce has come out of an unique county-level e-commerce development model: professional market + e-commerce.

2.9 Wugong model of ShaanxiWugong County has very convenient traffic, and is an important transportation hub and material distribution center in Guanzhong region. Besides location advantage, it has grasped the major opportunities such as "Belt and Road Initiative" and "Internet +". Wugong County has made great efforts to build a training base for rural e-commerce talents in Northwest China, a gathering place for e-commerce enterprises of agricultural products in Northwest China, and a logistics distribution center for agricultural and sideline special products in western China, and gradually found a new way of county-level e-commerce development of "buying in northwest, and selling to the whole country" with Wugong characteristics.

In order to make a breakthrough in the development of rural e-commerce, it is very important to do a good job of model innovation. By comparing 9 e-commerce development models in rural area, it could be found that firstly, this rural electronic market has not the only model at the beginning and nowadays, but many ways. Secondly, the market has many models, but no one can beat the world. An important reason also lies in the complexity of agriculture and rural area. Generally speaking, rural e-commerce is constrained by three laws: natural ecological law of agriculture or agricultural products, economic and social law of agriculture and rural area, and Internet + e-commerce law. Willfulness of neglecting or belittling any one of them will pay a price for it.

Therefore, "Internet+agriculture" or "countryside+Internet" is to combine the laws of the Internet with those of its application fields. The development of rural e-commerce focuses on market innovation, and must depend on and play creativity of farmers, enterprises, governments and other market subjects[4]. The gap and pain in the market need to be filled by market innovation and solved in the most efficient way. The development model is only a reference, not a direct application[5].

3 Key problems of regional development model of rural e-commerce

Simply speaking, rural e-commerce is that "citizens sell industrial products to the countryside through the Internet, and farmers sell agricultural products to the city through the Internet". Rapid development process of rural e-commerce has many problems. Among them, the most major problem is that there is extreme imbalance between products up-going and down-going; down-going scale of rural e-commerce products is far higher than up-going scale of agricultural products, and high-quality agricultural products are difficult to sell. There are few profiteers on agricultural products up-going, and the losses far exceed expectations. "Agricultural" taste of rural e-commerce is not strong. In the "document No.1" of 2017 (SeveralOpinionsonDeeplyPromotingtheStructuralReformofAgriculturalSupplySideandAcceleratingtheCultivationofNewKineticEnergyforAgriculturalandRuralDevelopmentbytheCentralCommitteeoftheCommunistPartyofChinaandtheStateCouncil), impelling the development of rural e-commerce was formally written into Article 14, in which agricultural products up-going was focus of local government work. In order to solve the problem of agricultural products up-going, three aspects should be concerned.

One is goods. Rural areas are rich in high-quality agricultural products of origin, but agricultural products are non-standard products. To obtain a good network goods, we need a series of ecological system construction, such as quality control, application of traceability technology, brand building and packaging design promotion.

Two is logistics and fresh-keeping. Without modern logistics system and fresh-keeping technology of agricultural products, it is difficult to deliver products to users in time. Even if it can be delivered, the cost will be staggeringly high.

Three is talent. When rural e-commerce is quickly distributing and increasing, the shortage of e-commerce talents is also increasing, and the development of rural e-commerce has been seriously shackled by it. Data of Ali Institute display that the demand of county-level network business for electric businessmen will exceed 2 million in the next two years, and it lacks three types of talents: operation promotion, artistic design and data analysis.

4 Discussions

Future development of rural e-commerce is mainly based on solving the problems of goods, logistics, insurance and talents. It will undoubtedly obtain the opportunities of rural e-commerce by solving these three problems. Although the development of rural e-commerce is still at the exploratory stage in many places, it took only a few years for rural e-commerce to develop vigorously. In the future, the development mode of rural e-commerce will continue to innovate, full of prospects.