China's rural e-commerce consumption keeps growing, and this year's market size will hit a new high
Alibaba Research Institute released the "Rural E-commerce Consumption Report (2014)" on the 13th, showing that China's rural e-commerce consumer market has continued to expand in recent years, and it is expected that the national rural online shopping market size will reach 180 billion yuan in 2014.
The report said that in the sample survey, the acceptance rate of online shopping among rural residents reached 84.41%, and the per capita annual online shopping expenditure was about 500-2000 yuan, mainly concentrated in categories such as daily necessities, clothing, and home appliances.
The report shows that, taking Taobao online shopping data as an example, the share of rural consumption has risen from 7.11% in the second quarter of 2012 to 9.11% in the first quarter of 2014. Alibaba Group Vice President Gao Hongbing said that although this share is still relatively low, it shows a steady upward trend, and with the steady increase in rural internet users and internet penetration, the rural e-commerce consumer market has great potential, and it is expected that by 2016 the total market size may exceed 460 billion yuan.
The report shows that the current group of rural online shopping consumers in China is younger and more mobile than urban internet users. Among them, the proportion of rural internet users in all age groups under 30 is higher than that of urban internet users, and those aged 20-29 are the largest group of rural internet users, accounting for 32%. At the same time, in 2013, the proportion of rural internet users using mobile phones to access the internet reached 84.6%, 5 percentage points higher than that in urban areas.
The report's analysis believes that low prices, abundant goods, and convenient purchasing are the "inherent advantages" that make online shopping increasingly popular among rural consumers, and with the continuous improvement of rural internet and logistics and other infrastructure, the development of rural online merchant groups and e-commerce platforms, and the pulling effect of large numbers of migrant workers coming into contact with and using online shopping, the rural online shopping consumption model will become increasingly widespread in the future and will continuously narrow the gap with urban consumption habits.
Restrictive factors still exist. The report believes that broadband, payment, and logistics are the three major factors restricting rural online shopping. In 2013, the broadband population penetration rate in rural areas was only 6.3%, 12.6 percentage points lower than that in urban areas, and the usage rate of online payment among rural internet users was 25.7%, 22.2 percentage points lower than that in urban areas. Problems such as "broadband not being broad," "payment not being easy," and "express delivery stopping at townships" still trouble vast rural areas.
Gao Hongbing said that developing rural online shopping requires, on the one hand, overall planning and reasonable guidance by the government to create a good service environment for local e-commerce, logistics, and so on, and on the other hand, further investment in infrastructure and service innovation by various e-commerce platforms to build a rural e-commerce ecosystem.