Did you go back to your hometown for the New Year this year?
Compared with the past, whether the changes in your hometown today surprise you.
Nowadays, many young people return home from first- and second-tier cities after the New Year, they find that their parents will use mobile phones to shop online, compare prices, relatives are keen to use red envelope transfers to distribute pressure money, almost every day can receive express deliveries from all over the country, which are fresh cherries, seafood and aquatic products and a variety of cost-effective electronic products...
With the development of the Internet and the sinking market, the changes in third- and fourth-tier cities are not the same. In recent years, in many counties, local residents have neither high loan pressure nor exuberant spending power than residents in first-tier cities.
This issue's microscopic story tells the story of a group of young people who have returned home, among them:
Some people have been undertaking the task of purchasing for the elderly family for many years and helping their mothers to shop online from first- and second-tier cities, but this year's Spring Festival she found that her role was reversed with her mother, and her mother began to popularize the "good things of life" on various special-price platforms for her;
Although some people live in the county, but also have a heart that loves a better life, before many years of suffering in the county can not buy the flowers they want, in recent years thanks to the popularity of online shopping platforms, her home is always not short of the most delicate roses from Yunnan;
There are also people who run rentals in Lhasa, which has only two large shopping malls in the city, and every year they have to take advantage of the New Year to buy daily necessities after returning to their hometown, and endure high courier costs to send back to Lhasa, but in recent years, he has finally ended such a life...
From their stories, we may be able to try to find out where the most exuberant consumption power of counties and townships is. Who, exactly, is silently changing all this, so that the distance between big cities and small towns is gradually shortening.
Here are the true stories about them:
Text | Chang Ningning
Edit | Shi Ningyu
Driving from the plain into the mountains, seeing the snow-covered peaks and the white clouds, Rao Fei threw his feet and kicked the gift box at his feet.
Inside the box is the cheli that Rao Fei went to the imported supermarket the day before to buy, her mother always said that although she loves to eat, but "it is not easy to buy, expensive, rich people occasionally enjoy", Rao Fei thought to herself, this is the most suitable fruit to bring back to do New Year goods.
Since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, Rao Fei has not returned home for the Chinese New Year for nearly three years. In her impression, her hometown Ofichuan is a small city with underdeveloped logistics and weak consumption power, and there are only a few lone shopping malls in the city center, and every New Year's Day, she has to drive a mountain road to Chongqing for several hours to buy New Year goods.
In the first few years when Rao Fei first came to work in Shanghai, she also undertook the work of helping her old family to buy on behalf of her family. Due to the age of her parents, she is not very good at online shopping with mobile phones, so Rao Fei often buys good things online in advance before returning home and sends them back.
But after returning to Lichuan, Rao Fei found that everything was different from the original.
Cafes can be found everywhere on the street, selling a cup of hand-ground coffee for more than 30 yuan, and the owner also said "don't worry about selling". Street florists also have the most popular "fortune bucket" of the year, which sells for 3 figures, and it is said that reservations are now queued up until February to pick up the goods.
Rao Fei's family is even more different: in order to welcome her daughter back, her mother has already laid out New Year goods on the table, many of which are purchased from the origin of the network, such as Xinjiang crisp dates, rose grapes, Fuping persimmon cakes, and the popular Buddha jumping wall along the southeast coast.
Mom triumphantly displayed these "booty" bought from the Internet. As soon as he heard the price of the cherries that Rao Fei bought, he immediately said, "You buy expensive", "Now we are very convenient to shop online here, things are cheap and of good quality, and when you leave, I will send you something to Shanghai." ”
Figure | You can also buy large cherries from the county seat of origin
In recent years, the purchasing roles of Rao Fei and her mother are quietly being exchanged.
Rao Fei also can't remember when to start, her mother learned to use a mobile phone, and also took the initiative to buy her daily necessities such as masks, thermal underwear, and clothes storage boxes on the Internet.
"The quality of those things is similar to that bought in the city, but the price may be less than half of the sales in the city," Rao Fei said, and she does not know when her mother mastered the skills of online shopping, and even knew how to find the most cost-effective "good things in life" on the whole network.
Rao Fei's surprise may be found in a piece of data. According to Ai Media Consulting data, more than 50% of the users of the China Double Eleven Shopping Festival in 2021 live in cities and towns below the third tier.
Like Rao Fei's mother, consumers from third- and fourth-tier cities and counties are becoming a consumption force that cannot be ignored. The reason may be that most of this type of consumer does not have high mortgage and car loan pressure, and the disposable income in consumption is richer and more willing than that of residents in first- and second-tier cities.
Zhu Shihan, who is in Jishou, Hunan, also feels the same "gap" as Rao Fei.
Before the Spring Festival this year, Zhu Shihan deliberately selected a snack gift box in Guangzhou to take back to his hometown, but after arriving home, he found that the gift box he brought back from the first-tier city had become the most "shabby" thing in the family.
While bringing seafood to the table, parents took out strawberries and other fruits, and did not forget to let Zhu Shihan, "Bring some back, you are reluctant to buy outside."
Figure | Strawberries purchased by parents online
That night, Zhu Shihan also brushed up on the New Year goods and Chinese New Year's Eve meals of other hometown friends in the circle of friends, he was a little confused, and in the early years everyone said that he went to Guangzhou from the mountains to work "to have a job".
"Why does it seem that now I am not as good as my old family?" Zhu Shihan was a little puzzled.
Thanks to the sinking of e-commerce channels and logistics construction, the lives of residents in third- and fourth-tier cities may have already exceeded the imagination of most people.
"Now that it is so convenient to buy things, what difference can there be in the lives of people in first- and second-tier cities and third- and fourth-tier cities?" Liu Lei said. He is a courier brother in Lichuan, and he has just finished delivering goods from a certain community between words, ready to return to the courier point to pull down a car.
Figure | On the second day of the Chinese New Year, Liu Lei is still delivering
This year, the major e-commerce platforms have played the slogan of "spring festival does not close", which leads to the entire Spring Festival Liu Lei needs to get up at 6 o'clock as usual, so that the express delivery of the site can be delivered to the hands of residents on time, "a little rest may burst the warehouse, busy can not come." ”
"Now there are more and more online shopping platforms, and the volume of express delivery in Lichuan is also large." Liu Lei has calculated an account, he can earn an average of 8,000 yuan per month, and other courier brothers in the same city can earn up to 20,000 yuan a month.
You know, Lichuan's per capita income is only 4,000 yuan, and the courier has undoubtedly become a high-income job.
Behind the high income of express delivery practitioners, it is also the squeezed shopping demand of the county that is released.
Zhu Qin, a native of Henan, has been running taxis in Lhasa for more than a decade, and he calls himself a "heavy online shopping user."
In Zhu Qin's 2021 annual bill, "online shopping expenditure" accounted for more than 50% of consumption, close to 10,000 yuan. Zhu Qin said he buys hundreds of yuan of things at Taote every month, covering everything from clothing and food to daily necessities.
"If you don't buy it online, where do you buy it?" Zhu Qin said Lhasa's first Wanda only opened in 2020, and there are only two slightly larger shopping malls in the city today.
For a long time, Zhu Qin, like other Lhasa residents, could only buy things in small shops along the street, "brand stores are few, all are seasonal products."
Sometimes, Zhu Qin will wait for the New Year to return to his hometown to purchase, but the freight cost of tens of yuan at every turn makes him difficult, no matter which choice, it is costly for Zhu Qin, and the quality of life is not to mention.
But in the past two years, Zhu Qin found that many special sale platforms have emerged on mobile phones, which rely on the M2C model (manufacturer to consumer) to further compress the price of goods, so that consumers can buy brand products at cheap prices.
One of his proudest orders came from a rich bird shirt bought in the New Year, "the store sells more than 200 yuan, as long as it is more than 60 yuan on the Taote platform, it is only 1 week to transport to Tibet, no matter how far the township can be delivered."
Convenient and cost-effective online channels make up for the shortcomings of offline channels, and also let people in remote areas end the dilemma of "having money and no place to spend".
On the other hand, after the popularization of online platforms, the consumption needs of small groups in the county can also be met, and there is no longer a need to pay extra high service fees.
Wang Minhui, who lives in a township in Danyang County, Yichang, is one of the consumers who are satisfied. In addition to buying some life users on the Internet, Wang Minhui also likes to order bouquets on Taote.
"There are few kinds of flowers in the town flower shop, the price is too expensive, a peony is 10 yuan smaller", Wang Minhui, who likes to watch Korean dramas, wants a bouquet of flowers inserted in the vase in the TV series, if calculated according to the price in the town, she feels that flowers are a big luxury.
Wang Minhui also tried the flower monthly service, "but four bouquets of flowers not much larger than the palm of the hand in a month cost 200 yuan", 200 yuan is almost a week of living expenses for a family of 5.
In Taote, Wang Minhui can buy a large bouquet of new flowers sent from Yunnan origin for only a few yuan, and it only takes 3 days to get home, "which is much more cost-effective than ordering flowers in the store." ”
In addition, the convenient online shopping platform has opened up a vast "consumption map" for people in these third- and fourth-tier counties. The popularity of e-commerce has solved the problem of insufficient penetration of physical commerce in counties and even townships in the past, and broadened the consumption scenarios and spaces of county and township residents.
"Before, we only dared to buy what we had heard and seen," Rao's mother said, but on Taote, she found that there were many novelties that she could not imagine.
Figure | Behind the M2C model is China's strong industrial chain and platform supply chain
Today, her life is filled with many products outside of cognition, such as a car USB stick with 1,000 songs, a clothing artifact, and a pair of cotton slippers for 3 yuan. She even used more than 100 yuan to buy brand shoes worth 400 yuan.
"Isn't the improvement in living standards that you can buy more and better things with less money?"
Zhu Qin, Wang Minhui, and Rao Fei's mother are just ordinary residents living in Chinese counties.
According to China's administrative divisions, there are 2856 county-level administrative divisions on the mainland, in other words, county life constitutes the background of Chinese life.
This is also the case, special sale, sinking, county, once many e-commerce platforms aimed at the blue ocean, vast users and squeezed shopping needs to give the market a lot of imagination, so many companies launched products for this group of users, and through the "low price" and other ways to promote, but most of them folded, so that many practitioners issued a "special price without loyalty" wail.
This also leads to another question: what kind of consumption scenarios do consumers living in counties need?
Perhaps we can get some clues and reflections from some consumption scenarios.
Wang Minhui, who likes to buy flowers, has another identity, she is a full-time mother of two children, and her life range does not exceed the 3 kilometers of home-centered area. The waiting for a child and the complicated chores make it difficult for her to get out of the repetitive and tedious life, and she also needs to make careful calculations for the life of the whole family.
The mini-games built into the platform and the social-based fission became her social place.
She will take time to play small games on a platform like Taote, "a round is only three or five minutes, or share it", for which she joined many "mutual aid groups", which are the same as her mother, everyone shares money-saving skills with each other, do tasks together, not only can accumulate cash withdrawals, coupons, direct deductions when buying things, no need for redundant operations.
Figure | Taote's low cash threshold is low and convenient, which makes Wang Minhui feel reliable
For Wang Minhui, this has become a way of life, no need to go around the stove, go to the vendors for a few cents to bargain, brush their faces.
"And the price above is very affordable, the span is not large, avoiding us do not know how to choose, compare, bargain."
When Rao Fei's mother first used the online shopping platform, she would sort by price, but when faced with the same product with a huge price difference, she could only swing in the price through pictures and evaluations, and then reduce the price with the owner.
But on a platform like Taote, where the source is directly supplied, the price is no longer a disturbing factor, and the mother has saved a lot of price comparison time.
But if there are only small games and cheap prices, can we reproduce the success of the sale platform?
Zhu Qin in Tibet gave an answer that was no. Zhu Qin began to run the society before graduating from junior high school, and he described himself as "going straight and not liking to bend and turn", which is also reflected in his shopping habits.
He placed 33 orders in Taote in a year, "because the operation is simple, pop-up window advertising is less", in addition, the factory is straight, the quality is stable, the delivery speed is fast, for Tibet, which is inconvenient for transportation, many merchants do not ship places, Taote not only delivers, but also can arrive in 7 days, this kind of humanistic care is what he is moved.
But where the imagination margin of county e-commerce lies, no one knows.
Rao Fei looked at the tens of thousands of yuan bills on her mother's Alipay, the express boxes stuffed at home, and the Chinese New Year's Eve meals sent by the students who stayed in her hometown, and understood that the consumption potential of the county was far more than that.
"What's more, there are still many county brands that are settling on online platforms, and many townships are also looking for development because of the opportunities brought by e-commerce."
Figure | Many new farmers sell their produce through Taote
Behind all these possibilities is the outbreak of the county that has been neglected for many years in the era of traditional offline commerce, and it is also the sinking people's yearning for a better life and the upgrading of life. It is precisely with the cost-effective direct power supply provider that county consumption has been redefined and new opportunities are being staged.
We are always discussing what the taste of the year is, and what the people's expectations are at the end of each year to "be rich and healthy and live a better life" in the coming year.
Perhaps a New Year's newspaper that circulated too much in 1982 can give us the answer. That newspaper was the supply of materials for the New Year in the top 4 cities in the domestic economy that year, and each city resident could only buy 1 kilogram of fish and meat with a ticket, and a household could only buy 3 kilograms of eggs... The scarcity of supplies throughout that era, the county became a neglected presence.
Figure | In 1982, the annual report on the supply of materials for the Spring Festival on paper
Today, with the development of society, the definition of "good life" has long changed from having enough to being able to share the fruits of development.
I have to admit that the increasingly strong purchasing power of the sinking market has gradually become a non-negligible existence among e-commerce consumers, compared with the "indifferent" existence of the previous county, this group of county consumers also has diversity in shopping.
They may not buy Cod from Alaska that has just jumped out of the water, or seagulls that have not seen the seagulls skimming the city at a low altitude across the ocean, but they also have a desire for a better life, hoping to buy small appliances that are satisfactory, taste food 1,000 kilometers away, and buy high-quality department stores at low prices.
That is, people in first-tier cities can buy water transported from Paris, residents on the plateau can also easily buy soft tissues, cold clothes, and everyone can overcome the differences brought about by regional development inequality, free shopping on the Internet, and the "equal rights" given to everyone by the Internet.
Behind this equality is the Internet era created by the special sale platforms, "Ande Guangsha tens of millions of rooms, shelter the world and the cold people are happy".