Is Internet Plus agriculture a concept or a way out?

Leisure agriculture is a livelihood industry and a new type of consumption format that has developed along with the continuous growth of residents' incomes and in response to the growing consumer demand for leisure sightseeing, farming experiences, vacation and wellness retreats, and more. Against the backdrop of promoting the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, developing the multiple functions of agriculture, and enhancing the comprehensive benefits of agriculture, all regions are actively developing leisure agriculture. In 2014, there were more than 1.8 million operating entities in leisure agriculture nationwide, including farm stays, folk-culture villages and leisure farms, among which farm stays exceeded 1.5 million, enterprises above designated size exceeded 40,000, annual visitor numbers reached 1 billion, operating revenue reached 300 billion yuan, and 30 million farmers were driven to gain employment and increase their incomes. However, in the course of rapid development, problems such as a single information promotion channel, poor information flow, homogeneous and structurally identical products, vicious competition, low quality of practitioners, and fleecing and cheating customers have become fairly prominent, becoming a bottleneck constraining the development of leisure agriculture.

In recent years, industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, transportation and education have continuously integrated with the Internet, new business models have kept emerging, and the transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing and service industries have been driven forward. In particular, after Premier Li Keqiang proposed the “Internet Plus” action plan in the 2015 government work report, more and more people began to think about how to better use “Internet Plus” to create more value for enterprises. As a product that meets consumer demand, leisure agriculture should conform to the development trends of the industry and, from a market perspective, be advanced along the three dimensions of “connection”, “interaction” and “reconstruction”, so as to achieve cross-sector integration with the Internet, break through the bottlenecks constraining industry development, and promote upgrading.

“Connection” promotes the expansion of promotion channels and makes it easier for consumers to obtain products. The essence of the Internet is to provide abundant connections. At present, the channels through which consumers obtain leisure agriculture products are relatively limited, and most still rely on word-of-mouth transmission. In particular, consumers only know about some large, relatively mature products, while they know very little about small products with distinctive features. Therefore, leisure agriculture urgently needs to build a bridge between producers and operators and consumers through connections, and to create influential promotion and recommendation platforms. For example, in 2014 the Beijing Municipal Commission of Rural Affairs cooperated with Baidu to mark 335 folk-culture villages, 914 leisure parks and 4,077 folk-culture households across the city on Baidu Maps, so that consumers could find product information conveniently and quickly through Baidu Maps.

“Interaction” promotes the establishment of a credit evaluation system and enhances product transparency. With the development of the Internet, Internet users not only receive information but also create it. From online forums to social platforms, and then to various apps that carry self-media, user comment information has facilitated interaction between users. In this interaction, e-commerce platforms such as B2C, C2C and O2O have emerged, and consumers can evaluate their consumption experience within the platform. Fragmented evaluation information constitutes the credit evaluation of a product, enabling future consumers to learn more comprehensive product information and then make purchasing decisions. Leisure agriculture is a market gathering numerous operators. Taking Beijing as an example, in 2014 there were 1,301 sightseeing and leisure agriculture parks and 15,785 households receiving visitors for folk tourism. Facing such a huge group of operators, consumers can hardly obtain product information by traditional means of transmission alone, and high-quality products cannot obtain high returns. Therefore, it is necessary to customize an Internet platform for leisure agriculture, open a user evaluation window, and collect consumers' evaluation information about products, so that before experiencing a product, consumers can obtain symmetrical product information, and then evaluate and distinguish products and make purchasing decisions.

“Reconstruction” promotes the satisfaction of consumer demand and increases the added value of products. In the Internet era, demand-oriented product development has begun to become the mainstream approach, and consumers' recognition directly determines the monetization of product value. As consumers' requirements for products become clearer, product positioning becomes more precise, fully creating personalized and diversified products targeted at different ages, genders, hobbies, usage habits and other aspects. Leisure agriculture products happen to conform to the “personalized and diversified” trend. Because each operating entity has a limited number of visitors and relies on different natural resources, what it operates is not the “few varieties, large batches” products of large tourist attractions, but “many varieties, small batches” products with distinctive features. For example, Qingyundian Town in Daxing District has achieved “one household, one product” among folk tourism host households, highlighting the dining theme and style of each household. But how these features can better satisfy consumer demand requires operators to understand consumers' demands and, based on those demands, create higher product value. Therefore, on Internet platforms, leisure agriculture must realize not only information interaction between consumers and consumers, but also information interaction between operators and consumers, and through consumer demands reconstruct leisure agriculture products and enhance product added value.