Remote rural areas look forward to opening up the last mile of rural e-commerce

Rural areas themselves are vast and sparsely populated, scattered in distribution, and difficult to collect and distribute goods in, so building a sound logistics system has become an important aspect of competition among major e-commerce platforms and express delivery companies for the rural market

Policy measures are needed to solve what individual e-commerce companies previously wanted to do but could not do well, and to break through the institutional and mechanistic obstacles to the development of agricultural e-commerce

This year's "Double 11", the first Alibaba Rural Taobao delivery was made in Zhongyize Village, Miyang Town, Mile City, Yunnan Province. The pressure cooker selected by the villager took less than 1.5 hours from order placement to signing for receipt.

While the buyer was still asleep, the rush-purchased product had already been quietly delivered by Dongjun Logistics, a Cainiao Network rural logistics partner, to the village Taobao service station at the doorstep.

Along with the surge in online shopping, "marching into the countryside" has become an important business strategy for today's e-commerce companies. Rural e-commerce has begun to become a new must-win battleground. Data released by Alibaba for the 2016 "Double 11" show that there were nearly 20,000 rural Taobao points nationwide, covering 425 counties, and 5 million villagers bought 11.5 million types of goods. Driven by the market, large companies such as Alibaba, JD.com and Suning have entered rural areas, and rural e-commerce is increasingly showing a pattern of "two superpowers, many strong players, and one large expanse."

Although rural e-commerce has encountered unprecedented development opportunities, the current relative backwardness of the logistics industry has become a major obstacle to the development of rural e-commerce. Hong Tao, director of the Institute of Business Economics at Beijing Technology and Business University, said that some rural areas are located in remote places, logistics development is clearly lacking, and preservation technology, storage capacity and distribution strength vary unevenly, especially cold-chain logistics capacity is insufficient.

The "last mile" problem has become a major difficulty standing in the way of express delivery going to the countryside and e-commerce sinking to lower-tier markets. At the same time, the realities of rural areas themselves, such as vast land and sparse population, scattered distribution, difficulty in collecting and distributing goods, and empty return trips, are hard to change in a short period. For this reason, building a sound logistics system has become an important aspect of competition among major e-commerce platforms and express delivery companies for the rural market.

How exactly should the "last mile" of rural e-commerce be traveled? "More and more new farmers' expectations for logistics timeliness have begun to move closer to those of the city." Xiong Jian, general manager of the Rural Business Unit of Cainiao Network, said that through big data forecasting, home appliances and agricultural materials and tools that better fit rural purchasing habits can be moved down in advance to county warehouses, achieving 50% same-day delivery and 100% next-day delivery. Big-data-supported advance inventory deployment can help merchants respond more quickly to market demand and shorten the time goods spend in transit.

Data show that at present several leading domestic express delivery companies have completed more than 80% outlet coverage at the county level, and a four-level service network has begun to take shape, laying the foundation in advance for the next explosive point in rural e-commerce. In addition to the continuously increasing outlets of private express delivery companies, China's postal service system is also constantly improving. In 2015, the number of nationwide postal universal service business outlets reached 53,000, and village postal stations reached 210,000, generally achieving "a post office in every township and postal service in every village."

In addition, many places across the country have also successively created new models and new methods, such as the Zhejiang Suichang Ganjie model and the Tianjin township station model, in an effort to solve the problem of e-commerce entering villages. At the beginning of this year, when a reporter from Economic Daily interviewed in Suichang, Zhejiang, they learned that a "Ganjie Network" model was very popular among farmers. In each village, service stations were set up relying on commercial shops or clinics, computers were provided free of charge to the service stations, and cooperation with telecom operators solved the internet access problem. At the same time, part-time station attendants were trained in each village, and through a rebate model young people helped villagers make purchases on Ganjie Network.

"At the beginning of the model, most rural areas in Suichang had no express delivery." Pan Dongming, head of the Suichang Online Store Association, said that to solve this problem, the online store association and relevant departments jointly built a logistics system from Suichang county seat to each village, at 4 yuan per order, arriving in one day. Every day, the first thing outlet staff do when they start work is register the express deliveries delivered to the outlet, and then notify villagers to come and collect them. Likewise, if villagers have items to send out, they only need to hand them in at the village "Ganjie" outlet.

How can "agricultural goods going to the city" and "online goods going to the countryside" be combined in a wider range of rural areas? Wang Xiaobing, deputy director of the Market and Economic Information Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that policy measures are needed to solve what individual e-commerce companies previously wanted to do but could not do well, and to break through the institutional and mechanistic obstacles to the development of agricultural e-commerce. For example, rural logistics distribution and other matters need to be advanced as a whole within the county scope in order to reduce costs. In addition, the preferential support measures for land use, electricity use and network use that e-commerce has long awaited must also be implemented as soon as possible.