Per reporter: Xie Tao Per editor: Yang Huan
The outbreak of the new crown epidemic has deeply affected the social and economic operation, and to a certain extent, it has changed the development rhythm and innovation direction of e-commerce.
On December 16th, the 2021 China (Chengdu) Platform Economy Conference and the 11th Mobile E-commerce Annual Conference with the theme of "Chuangsheng Quality Platform enjoy digital consumption" was held in Rong. At the event site, the list of 100 opportunities for the new consumption scenario of Chengdu platform economy and e-commerce (the second batch) was freshly "baked". The "Report on the Innovative Development of E-commerce in the Post-epidemic Era" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") was also released.
Focusing on the opportunities and challenges facing the development of e-commerce, the latest development trends of live e-commerce and rural e-commerce, the reporter of the Daily Economic News talked with Li Mingtao, president of the China International E-commerce Center Research Institute. In his view, the e-commerce sector has played a key role in fighting the epidemic and ensuring supply, promoting consumption, helping exports and promoting digital transformation. "In times of uncertainty, e-commerce is trying to bring some certainty to society."
Li Mingtao, president of the China International Electronic Commerce Center Research Institute Image source: Photo by zhang Jian, a reporter
Under the global "epidemic" haze, online consumption habits have accelerated, and the global online retail market has achieved contrarian growth. According to eMarketer data, the global online retail scale reached $4.213 trillion in 2020, an increase of 25.7%.
According to relevant forecasts, in 2021, China's online retail scale will rank first in the world for the eighth consecutive year.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first three quarters of 2021, the national online retail sales were 9,187.1 billion yuan, an increase of 18.5% year-on-year, higher than the year-on-year growth rate of 16.4% of the total retail sales of consumer goods. Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods were 7,504.2 billion yuan, an increase of 15.2% year-on-year. The contribution of online retail sales of physical goods to the growth of total retail sales of consumer goods in society reached 22.1%.
"Since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, e-commerce has played an advantage in connecting online and offline, accurate matching of supply and demand, and efficient connection between production and marketing, and its role in market supply assurance, epidemic prevention and control, resumption of production and work, promotion of consumption, and stable employment has been further highlighted." Li Mingtao told reporters.
For example, this year's third "Double Product Online Shopping Festival" drove the national online retail sales of 692.8 billion yuan, an increase of 26.7% year-on-year, of which the online retail sales of physical goods were 562 billion yuan, an increase of 25.9% year-on-year.
Taking Chengdu as an example, Li Mingtao shared that during the Chengdu Digital Life Consumption Festival in August this year, the e-commerce transaction volume in Chengdu reached 400.316 billion yuan, and the online retail sales reached 89.972 billion yuan, an increase of 28.21% year-on-year. "The online retail market has shown strong resilience and vitality and has become an important engine to drive consumption."
The report pointed out that while the domestic online retail market continues to expand, China's cross-border e-commerce has also maintained a high-speed growth trend, and the import growth momentum is strong. In the first half of this year, the total import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce in China reached 886.7 billion yuan, an increase of 28.6% year-on-year.
"Under the background of the global spread of the epidemic and the increasing downward pressure on trade, cross-border e-commerce has played a new role in coordinating the two international and domestic markets and two kinds of resources, which has become an important component of promoting the double cycle." Li Mingtao said.
At present, live e-commerce is showing an explosive growth trend, which has exceeded the scale of trillions, and the growth rate has exceeded that of traditional e-commerce.
So, what are the new trends in the accelerated development of live e-commerce? Li Mingtao pointed out that in 2021, China's live e-commerce shows a development trend of standardization, ecology, refinement and industrialization.
As far as standardization is concerned, with the implementation of the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Transactions and the Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Standardized Management of Online Live Broadcasting, the market order of the e-commerce live broadcasting industry has been further standardized, and the standardization process of the live e-commerce industry has reached a new level.
As far as ecology is concerned, as of the end of December last year, the number of registered enterprises related to live e-commerce in China has exceeded 8,000, the number of anchor employees is about 1.23 million, and the number of MCN institutions is about 2,800, and the industrial ecology is accelerating.
As far as refinement is concerned, Li Mingtao believes that "live e-commerce has entered the era of refined operation, service providers have developed to segmentation, and practitioners have become more professional. "More than 90% of the head celebrities signed a contract with MCN, or set up MCN themselves, and the entrepreneurial team formed around the anchor has spawned more than 20 occupations in five categories, such as operation management, live broadcast services, video services, live e-commerce, and auxiliary logistics."
As far as industrialization is concerned, Li Mingtao said that the whole country takes the construction of live e-commerce bases as the development direction to form an industry cluster effect and an influential live broadcast industry base in the country. At the same time, live e-commerce has effectively improved quality and efficiency and accelerated integration with the industrial chain supply chain by adopting flexible supply chains and high-standard quality control.
Under the above general trend, the rapid "out of the circle" of domestic brands and the development of community group buying are particularly eye-catching.
Li Mingtao told reporters that the rapid development of e-commerce has promoted the digital upgrading of business, which has laid a solid foundation for the efficient incubation of new brands, the incubation cycle of domestic brands has been accelerating, the new domestic products have quickly broken the circle with the help of live broadcasting, and the national tide cultural and creative brands have accelerated their detonation. "For example, in the second year of the establishment of Perfect Diary, the annual sales exceeded 2 billion; this year's Double Eleven Taobao '10 million live broadcast rooms', domestic brands accounted for more than half; 14 intangible cultural heritage industrial belts in Taobao Tmall year turnover of more than 100 million."
In addition, the "2021 Social E-commerce Innovation and Development Report" released by the China Association of Trade in Services shows that the size of China's community group buying market is expected to reach 587 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 400% year-on-year, and community group buying shows explosive growth.
Li Mingtao pointed out that with the acceleration of Internet giants such as Pinduoduo, Meituan, Ali, JD.com, and Didi, the concentration of the industry has further increased. Community group buying has innovated and iterated in social marketing scenarios, means, commodity supply, order aggregation and fulfillment delivery, which has accelerated the transformation of retail channels.
At present, rural e-commerce is injecting new vitality into the development of rural areas and accelerating rural revitalization.
According to the report, as of June 2021, the number of rural Internet users in China is 297 million, and the Internet penetration rate in rural areas is 59.2%. In 2020, China's comprehensive demonstration of e-commerce into rural areas will achieve full coverage of 832 poverty-stricken counties, and a total of 2,120 county-level e-commerce public service centers and logistics distribution centers and 137,000 village-level e-commerce service sites will be built nationwide. The use rate of short videos by netizens in the sinking market reached 88.6%, 2.2 percentage points higher than that of the first- and second-tier markets.
Li Mingtao introduced that the State Post General Administration "express delivery into the village project" and other projects in depth, the coverage rate of township rapid outlets has reached 98%, and the rural digital "new infrastructure" continues to improve.
In his view, the continuous sinking and expansion of e-commerce platforms has further activated the rural consumer market. "The e-commerce platform has accelerated the sinking penetration through low-cost groups, small programs, live e-commerce and direct supply of origins, providing low-cost and high-quality consumer goods for the majority of rural users." E-commerce poverty alleviation through the cultivation of e-commerce skills of business personnel, to drive the surrounding population to use the Internet shopping, to promote the sharing of inclusive results in poor areas of China, to achieve further equalization of regional consumption. ”
The report pointed out that with the improvement of rural digital "new infrastructure" and the activation of rural consumer markets, new models of e-commerce to revitalize agriculture continue to emerge and mature, and live e-commerce has become a new standard to promote agricultural product sales, farmers' employment and income.
Li Mingtao analyzed, for example, Taobao Live has accumulated 110,000 farmer anchors in the past three years, with more than 2.3 million broadcasts and sales of agricultural products exceeding 5 billion yuan. With the accelerated penetration of cross-border e-commerce into rural areas, the cross-border e-commerce model of agricultural products has risen, extending the radius of online sales of agricultural products to overseas markets.
While the e-commerce market continues to expand and the e-commerce model continues to innovate, can the corresponding institutional norms and policy guidance keep up?
With the promulgation of the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Transactions, the Measures for the Administration of Online Live Broadcasting Marketing (Trial) and other departmental rules, and the accelerated formulation of standards and norms such as the Specifications for the Selection of Online Live Broadcasting Marketing and the Specifications for the Management and Service of Live Broadcasting E-commerce Platforms (Draft for Solicitation of Comments), Li Mingtao believes that the regulatory system for new formats and models of e-commerce is gradually improving.
In the first half of this year, antitrust supervision of digital platforms continued to strengthen. Li Mingtao said that the Anti-Monopoly Commission of the State Council issued and implemented the Anti-Monopoly Guidelines on the Platform Economy, which put forward clear normative requirements for digital platform monopoly agreements, abuse of market dominance, concentration of undertakings, abuse of administrative power to eliminate restrictions on competition, etc., providing direction guidance for supervision.
At the same time, the pace of regulation of unfair competition is accelerating. In August this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the Provisions on the Prohibition of Online Unfair Competition (Draft for Public Comment), which clarified the governance provisions for common acts of unfair competition in the online environment, such as confusing behaviors, commercial bribery, and false publicity, and provided more explicit identification standards and regulatory measures for new types of online unfair competition behaviors such as "reverse brushing", "blocking advertisements", "choosing one of the two" and "killing big data" that have emerged in recent years.
"In addition to further increasing the penalties for infringement of intellectual property rights and better protecting intellectual property rights holders, China is also accelerating its data protection legislation." Li Mingtao shared his observations.
In April this year, the Personal Information Protection Law (Draft) was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for second deliberation, and in June, the Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China was promulgated, which clearly stipulates the obligations and legal responsibilities of data security protection, which will undoubtedly help further standardize the data protection and data utilization of e-commerce platform enterprises.
Finally, when talking about the future development trend of e-commerce, Li Mingtao believes that the integrated development of online and offline, products and services, e-commerce and social, urban and rural areas will be the future development direction of e-commerce. In the fields of intelligent products, collaborative production, and ubiquitous transactions, e-commerce will become the basic elements of the digital economy.
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