How can rural e-commerce bridge the last mile?
On the weekend that just ended, several college classmates arranged to go picking in the suburbs of Beijing. But the experienced drivers ran into a new problem. Usually accustomed to driving around under navigation guidance, this time they lost navigation guidance because the destination was just a small spot in a small village, and they lost their way only about 1 km from the picking site.
Guided by the vague memory of a classmate who had been there before, the people in the several cars finally reached the destination. Everyone found that this was a place only 10 km from Beijing's famous Summer Palace, yet simply because they had left the main road and entered the village, they had moved outside navigation range.
So everyone's question arose: if I lived here, what would I do about online shopping, which I cannot do without? How would this last mile be delivered, and who could guide the courier to deliver online purchases to the door promptly and accurately? Furthermore, the return and exchange rate for online shopping is very high. If there are several rounds of trouble, can the logistics cost withstand the cheapness brought by online shopping? And by extension, what would it be like in a remote small village elsewhere?
How can the last mile of rural e-commerce be reached economically and quickly?
After 10 years of explosive growth, the growth rate of online shopping users has slowed to below 20%. E-commerce giants are watching keenly and acting frequently, aiming to massively expand the rural e-commerce map and open up a new blue ocean for online shopping.
A report released by the Alibaba Research Institute predicted that in 2016 the total national rural online shopping market could exceed 460 billion yuan. Compared with the 180 billion yuan rural e-commerce market scale in 2014, this will be a "wild field" full of hope.
E-commerce giants eagerly hope that rural e-commerce will become a "formidable player" in online shopping, and the major trend of Internet Plus gives the rural e-commerce boom a broad backdrop for dreams to come true. But how to sail in the new blue ocean is not a simple question.
Relevant experts point out that the logistics distribution problem is a major issue in the development of rural e-commerce. China's rural areas are scattered, and total logistics and transport volume is also small, resulting in high distribution costs and serious empty returns. This very objective and natural geographical reason is nevertheless a major problem that rural e-commerce cannot avoid, and a major bottleneck that rural e-commerce has to solve.
For China's e-commerce, low prices and saving money are the "trump card" frequently played in competition with traditional retail. Various online marketing promotions in the e-commerce world are all inseparable from the basic element of low prices. According to statistics from iResearch, 48% of consumers choose online shopping because of price factors.
If rural e-commerce is to develop greatly, it will inevitably face an operating model different from urban online shopping. At present, the vast majority of China's logistics distribution systems reach only the county level (some reach large towns), so some pioneers of rural e-commerce establish operating center sites (main warehouses) at the county level, connect with logistics companies, and then build their own secondary distribution logistics from county towns to rural areas, so that online shopping goods smoothly reach villagers' hands.
In response to the various constraints faced by rural e-commerce in logistics, hardware equipment, internet access conditions, and cultural skills, the solution of "Ganjie.com" is: establish a service site in each village (relying on the village's small shop or clinic), equip the service site with a computer free of charge, and cooperate with telecom companies to solve the internet access problem; find a young person in each village, train them as a village service worker (part-time), and use a rebate model to let young people help villagers make purchases on Ganjie.com as agents.
These methods of "Ganjie.com" are very creative and are also one of the effective means of developing rural e-commerce. But there is no doubt that the laying of a logistics network requires not only a large amount of early investment, but also continuous later investment to maintain the normal operation of the network. Relevant reports show that the predicted annual per capita online shopping consumption in rural areas is 500-2,000 yuan, mainly concentrated in categories such as daily necessities, clothing, and home appliances. On the one hand, on the premise that farmers' incomes have not grown rapidly, online shopping consumption will not develop beyond conventional levels; on the other hand, building a complete logistics network is not easy.
At present, the overall model of China's rural e-commerce is still in a chaotic state, and the path is very unclear. E-commerce talent is very familiar with the urban e-commerce environment and has a very good grasp of urban people's online shopping psychology. They have many methods for online shopping promotions, publicity, and cultivating loyal fans, and can really stir things up. But are these methods effective for the rural market? What are the characteristics of the rural online shopping market? What goods are most needed in rural online networks? How can "agricultural goods entering the city" and "online goods going to the countryside" achieve the most perfect combination? A large number of practical problems remain to be solved. It is not enough to shout a few slogans and fool people with sentimental words. It is necessary to bring out real skills and real money to do things, and also to treat the rural market with genuine sincerity.
The last mile of the rural e-commerce market is a distance not only in geography, but also in material, cultural, and consumer psychology. Although rural China has a population of 800 million and the market prospects are fanciful. But the fact that must also be faced squarely is that the development of rural e-commerce faces five major bottlenecks. In addition to the major bottleneck of logistics, there are also the bottlenecks of ideas, talent, policy, and model.
Only by truly working hard to open the bottlenecks can the explosive development of rural e-commerce be welcomed.