How to solve the problem of unsalable agricultural products? E-commerce charity helps farmers crack the code
"After a week of effort, all 250,000 jin of charity apples in the Jiutu Village area of Yongping Township were sold out, recovering about 5,000 yuan in losses per household on average." At 10:28 p.m. on October 24, after posting this Weibo message through his mobile client, Pan Zhe, deputy county head of Li County, Longnan City, Gansu Province, finally breathed a sigh of relief.
High-quality apples were damaged by disaster and faced difficulty being sold, and the fruit growers were extremely anxious
"When Deputy County Head Pan came, I was worrying." On the afternoon of October 16, when Pan Zhe, who had gone to Jiutu Village in Yongping Township to work in the countryside, walked into the home of village Party branch secretary Wang Ruidan, Wang Ruidan was full of worries: that day, several apple buyers from other places had come to the village, and after looking at the apples, they offered too low a price, only 0.5 yuan per jin. "Everyone wants to sell the apples for money, but this price is only one-third of previous years."
"Li County Apple" is a nationally protected geographical indication product, and Li County is one of the country's 32 high-quality fruit production base counties, 60 key counties for high-quality apple production, and Gansu's 5 key counties for high-quality apple production, as well as one of the places of origin for pollution-free agricultural products. Apples are the characteristic pillar industry of Jiutu Village and also the main economic source for the villagers to escape poverty and become prosperous. Wang Ruidan said that at present the village has a total of 450 mu of old orchards at peak fruiting age and 1,400 mu of new orchards that have gradually begun to bear fruit. The annual apple output can reach nearly 700,000 jin, of which high-quality fruit and commercial fruit with a diameter of 70 mm or more account for about 550,000 jin and are sold to Guangdong, Shanghai and other places, while the remaining substandard fruit is sold to local juice factories. "There is not the slightest waste; all the apples have been turned into income and put into everyone's pockets."
"But this year's situation is completely different." Wang Ruidan said that in the past, when apple prices were at their best, they could sell for 2 yuan per jin, and at their lowest they could still sell for about 1 to 1.5 yuan. His family's 4 mu of old orchard could bring in more than 60,000 to 70,000 yuan in previous years, but due to natural disasters such as hail this spring, most of the village's apples suffered disaster and production dropped sharply. The harvested apples were covered with scars left after being damaged by hail. Merchants who used to come to the village to buy apples turned around and left after looking at them, and the apples were very difficult to sell.
"If we still cannot sell them, we can only sell them all to the juice factory at 0.2 yuan per jin, and we will not even recover the cost." Wang Ruidan expressed the melancholy of himself and the villagers.
"I picked up the villagers' apples and tasted them. They were sweet and delicious, with a good flavor. It is really a pity that such good apples cannot be sold just because the surface of the fruit has scars." Pan Zhe immediately promised the villagers that he would think of a way to find a sales channel, and also said to Wang Sanhu, Party secretary of Yongping Township, who had come to the countryside with him, "You and I will each take responsibility for 5,000 jin, and first try to think of a way through personal connections."
The reason Pan Zhe made this promise in front of the fruit growers was that he wanted to use Longnan City's rapidly developing government affairs Weibo, WeChat and e-commerce to help the fruit growers sell apples. "At first, I did not think of selling all the apples backlogged in the homes of the masses. I just wanted to try this way, sell as much as possible, and do my best to help them recover some losses."
Government affairs Weibo, personal WeChat and e-commerce join hands, and a relay of love helps farmers
"Today I went to Jiutu Village in Yongping Township. More than 400 mu of apples suffered a hail disaster this spring, leaving little pits on the fruit surface. Now the apples have been picked. They taste just as sweet and delicious, and when cut open they have the same rock-sugar core, but because the fruit surface is not good, they are all piled in the fields with no one asking about them. Seeing a year's hard work go to waste, the cadres and masses are burning with anxiety. The township secretary, the village Party secretary and I are also extremely anxious." At 3:58 p.m. on the 16th, Pan Zhe posted the situation of Jiutu Village's apples being difficult to sell to a WeChat group called "Apple Fate" that he had joined.
This message sent by Pan Zhe attracted great attention from the members of the WeChat group. "Suffered a disaster?" the group members immediately asked with concern, and Gongcheng Network then decided to cooperate with Li County in a charity sale of the disaster-affected apples. At 5 p.m. that day, Gongcheng Network launched a Weibo topic: "(Apples are hard to sell) the villagers are terribly worried. Now Gongcheng Network is selling them on a voluntary basis at 49 yuan for 10 jin with free shipping. All the money will be transferred to the villagers without keeping a single cent. This post is the proof!"
"The 49 yuan for a 10-jin pack of apples is the lowest cost price we calculated." Pan Zhe said that because the area is remote and the journey is long, the express delivery fee alone for shipping out a 10-jin box of apples is 16 yuan, the cost of the packaging box is 7 yuan, and adding the labor cost for handling, tape and losses, the total cost is close to 50 yuan.
In the evening of the 16th, after returning to the county seat, Pan Zhe immediately found Kang Weiqi and four other young people who had opened online stores on Taobao and started their own businesses, and discussed with them selling through the "Li County Apple Store" on Taobao. Kang Weiqi and the others quickly took action. Based on the photos and information provided by Pan Zhe, they carefully produced a product display and introduction, and named this sale "Charity Apple to Help Farmers."
At 9:10 p.m. on the 16th, Pan Zhe posted the request for help on his personal Sina Weibo. This was the first Weibo promotional message he sent. "Thank you all for your love. Buy delicious charity apples and help the fruit growers of Jiutu! Gansu Li County charity apples e-commerce helps farmers fresh Huaniu fruit rock-sugar core special price 10 jin with free shipping."
After sending the first Weibo message, when reposting it Pan Zhe @-mentioned more than a hundred bloggers in the fields of agricultural products, food and market sales. At the time, he did not know that the request for help he had sent through multiple channels had already continued to ferment nationwide with the help of the internet. After netizen "Food Industry Jiang Kun" placed an order and reposted it, his blogger friends began to follow up by reposting, commenting and buying. More than ten minutes later, his friend "Foodie Big Xiong," who had 1.59 million followers, reposted the Weibo message. "One hour later, orders rose from the original more than 60 to more than 180! More than two hours later, it was already more than 500!"
That night, 20,000 jin of "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" were sold!
On the morning of the 17th, Longnan City's government affairs Weibo "Longnan Release" reposted Pan Zhe's Weibo message, further accelerating the spread of the "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" action online. That day, after receiving Pan Zhe's WeChat request for help, our newspaper's Gansu reporter station also joined this public welfare action to help farmers. In addition to quickly reposting it, it also forwarded it to colleagues at the newspaper. Seeing the information forwarded by the reporter, Lin Chunyu, senior vice president of Beijing TRS Information Technology Co., Ltd., mobilized people in his WeChat Moments, and his WeChat friends in Beijing, Guangzhou and other places quickly ordered more than 1,000 jin of charity apples: "The charity apples arrived, and inside there was also a handwritten thank-you letter from the village committee. Apart from being hit by hail and looking a bit less presentable, the apples taste very good. I ate one at noon; it was sweet and crisp, very good!"
By 9:29 p.m. on the 17th, after 24 hours of a nationwide relay of love by netizens, 110,000 jin of Yongping's "charity apples" had been sold through e-commerce. Pan Zhe thanked everyone through Weibo, saying: "Today, the masses of Jiutu Village gathered around excitedly, happily discussing how to select and pack the fruit tomorrow so that the charity apples can be better delivered to everyone's hands. Now the masses of the surrounding villages are also eagerly looking forward to it, hoping everyone will continue to pass on the relay baton of love!"
On October 18, Taobao took the initiative to contact the Taobao online stores "Li County Apple Store" and "China Specialty Longnan Pavilion," proposing to provide a free advertising spot with a relatively large area, a relatively good position and a value of more than 500,000 yuan for the "charity apples" to help promote them. At noon on the 21st, Li County apples simultaneously went online in the first focus spots on the home pages of three major sections of Taobao: "Daily Specials," "Specialty China" and "Hui Chi," setting off a second climax of hot sales. At this time, "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" still had nearly 100,000 jin in inventory. At the same time, netizen "Food Industry Jiang Kun" and Sina both contacted relevant personnel of the "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" action to support their efforts; in addition, media such as Daily Gansu Network, CCTV Weibo and Great Northwest Network also joined the "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" action...
Public welfare help to farmers gives rise to brand marketing effects for agricultural products
"This was something I had not expected at all before." Pan Zhe said that although Li County's "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" had become a hot "star" online within that week, with people constantly calling or sending private messages wanting to order apples, they still chose to stop the action on the 24th because the apples in the hands of the disaster-affected fruit growers had all been sold out, and the task of "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" as a public welfare action had been completed.
"Never expected it. At the beginning, I also thought it would be good enough to sell a few thousand jin. If not for government affairs Weibo, personal WeChat and e-commerce, I would not have dared to imagine that these several hundred thousand jin of disaster-affected apples could all be sold, and sold for the same price as good apples." Relevant statistics show that the original Weibo messages for Li County's "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" were reposted more than 10,000 times and commented on nearly 3,000 times, and the Weibo topic received more than 11 million views. The two Taobao stores completed more than 24,000 transactions in total, the micro stores completed more than 1,000 transactions, and the total transaction value reached 1.3 million yuan.
The "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" action became "hot," and many netizens even considered this activity "the most successful case of e-commerce helping farmers in the history of Weibo."
"In fact, along with the continued heating up of the 'Charity Apple to Help Farmers' action, by the time the activity ended, it had quietly changed from an emergency public welfare action to help farmers into a normal online marketing activity for characteristic agricultural products." Pan Zhe believes that the reason the "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" action succeeded is, first, that when government affairs Weibo released information about the disaster-affected fruit growers, it focused on combining with e-commerce and adding online store links, so that netizens could place orders more conveniently; second, that the local government affairs Weibo gradually formed a matrix, and its credibility made the background of the action more trustworthy. Most importantly, the quality of Li County apples won broad recognition from everyone. From the 21st to the 24th, Taobao brought a total of more than 5 million visits to Li County apple sales online stores, greatly increasing the online visibility and brand influence of Li County apples.
Netizen "Food Industry Jiang Kun" said: "This should be the most awesome Weibo public welfare help to farmers in history." Netizen "Minnan E-commerce Circle" said that the "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" action shows that local governments can accomplish a great deal with the help of Weibo. It is a case very worth analyzing, grasped the key points of micro marketing, and hopefully can become a brand and achieve even better results next year.
The brand publicity effect of the "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" action on Li County and Li County apples is continuing to be released. A relevant responsible person of the local government told the reporter that the "Charity Apple to Help Farmers" action organically combined government affairs Weibo, personal WeChat and e-commerce, integrated mutual resources, produced a huge superimposed effect, opened a new path and gave rise to a brand effect. At present, many large distributors and supermarket chain enterprises have taken the initiative to contact Li County to discuss procurement business.