Should agricultural input enterprises actually engage in e-commerce?
Agricultural input e-commerce has been hyped up in the market. What problems can enterprises actually solve by developing e-commerce? Is it necessary for enterprises to engage in e-commerce?
The development of e-commerce is already relatively mature abroad. In China, with more than ten years of development, the concept of e-commerce has left a deep impression in consumers' minds and has begun to affect every aspect of our daily lives. In recent years, entrepreneurs in the agricultural input industry with advanced thinking have continuously tried agricultural input e-commerce. Although there have been failures, everyone believes the direction is right. As a saying on the forum goes, agricultural input e-commerce is not a question of whether to do it, but of who will do it and how to do it.
In addition to the problems that everyday e-commerce solves, agricultural input e-commerce, targeting the characteristics of the agricultural input industry, may also solve some problems that affect the healthy development of the industry.
Agricultural input e-commerce can save costs such as store leasing and store construction; for example, e-commerce construction reduces labor input and corresponding management expenses; for example, e-commerce reduces unnecessary expense outlays in some market segments. In addition, agricultural input e-commerce will be an important channel for new types of planting entities to choose agricultural inputs in the future; it will reduce the management expenses of related enterprises and improve efficiency; it will solve the sales difficulty of some agricultural input products that have good application results but are not willingly sold by dealers because of low profits. In the future, agricultural input e-commerce will comprehensively examine the agrochemical service level of related enterprises. Enterprises that rely on deception, or that regard agrochemical services merely as a promotional tool, will find it hard to adapt to future demand.
Agricultural input stores offer easy product queries, quick product price comparisons, and a comfortable user experience, which will save those new-type farmers time and cost in purchasing agricultural input products and allow them to devote more energy to the application technology of agricultural input products. Using the opportunity of agricultural input e-commerce development, agricultural input enterprises should continuously improve their sales channels, transitioning from the original single-channel sales to multi-channel sales, and even ultimately achieving omni-channel sales, realizing maximization of enterprise sales volume and sales profit. Agricultural input e-commerce is not only a demand of future agricultural planting; it also provides support for the future development of urban agriculture.
As the agricultural input industry enters the e-commerce era, it will solve part of the credit sale problem; it will greatly alleviate the problem of seasonal application of agricultural input products; the development of agricultural input e-commerce will inevitably maximize the circulation of information in all aspects of agricultural input products. Agricultural input e-commerce will greatly reduce the prices of agricultural inputs, greatly increase agricultural planting profits, stabilize grain production, and ensure national food security. Agricultural input e-commerce will enable merchants and farmers to re-establish a relationship of trust.
Because of more than ten years of domestic e-commerce development, related industries have improved accordingly, providing a lot of convenience for the agricultural input industry to operate e-commerce. The advantages of agricultural input e-commerce are obvious. It can not only solve the current difficulties of enterprises, but is also an exploration for solving the sustainable development of agriculture.