At present, China has become the fastest growing country in the world's e-commerce. According to the data, in 2021, China's online retail sales 130884 billion yuan, an increase of 14.1% compared with the previous year. Among them, the online retail sales of physical stores 108042 billion yuan, an increase of 12.0%, accounting for 24.5% of the total retail sales of consumer goods.
Among the online retail sales of physical goods, food, clothing and daily necessities increased by 17.8%, 8.3% and 12.5% respectively.
In fact, in recent years, the main reason for the rapid development of China's e-commerce is determined by China's national conditions. First of all, the Chinese base is large, with a consumer group of 14 people, which is the world's largest consumer market. In order to meet the consumer needs of different groups of people, e-commerce platforms have also come into being, and various businesses such as online shopping and live streaming have developed rapidly. The sudden epidemic in 2020 has played a role in fueling the development of e-commerce.
Secondly, the state has adopted a prudent and inclusive regulatory policy for the development of e-commerce, strengthened governance and compliance, and vigorously promoted the formation of a normal mechanism for standardized and coordinated development of e-commerce. Therefore, on this basis, the mainland's e-commerce business can develop so rapidly.
However, in stark contrast to China's emergence as the world's largest e-commerce market, the first Western countries to appear in e-commerce, the e-commerce business is still very flat, and there is no rapid growth. In fact, Western developed countries have been ahead of the mainland for more than ten years in the field of e-commerce, but their countries' e-commerce has not formed a large market scale, what is the reason for this?
In the author's opinion, it is mainly due to the following reasons:
1, the population base of Western countries is small, the domestic consumer market is not large, and the physical store is enough to meet the consumption needs of the people
The population of the United States, the European Union, and Japan combined is about 1 billion people, which is 400 million fewer than china. Due to the small population, the existing physical stores in China can fully meet the shopping needs of consumers, so it is difficult for e-commerce to obtain a substantial growth in the market development space.
Secondly, in Western countries, the working hours are short, the pace of life is slow, and the afternoon work time is earlier, such as Germany, which only works 5 or 6 hours a day. Therefore, they do not have much demand for online shopping and are not interested in it. Their daily life is more leisurely, and Westerners especially like outdoor activities, shopping seems to have become a pastime equivalent to walking for them.
2, express delivery in Western countries can not get up
Compared with the efficient and fast-paced express delivery business in China, the labor costs in developed countries in Europe and the United States are higher, and due to the sparse population and scattered residence in Western countries, many families will choose to live in remote suburbs far from towns, resulting in the final delivery link of express delivery taking a long time.
In addition, foreign couriers are different from domestic couriers and do not occupy their own off-work hours to work overtime. In Western countries, even the same city express delivery takes 3 days to arrive, and even the existing consumers can only receive the express delivery after 1 year.
Moreover, the cost of express delivery is still very high, in this case, consumers will definitely give up the idea of online shopping, preferring to shop by themselves, which is more convenient and fast.
3, the developed countries of the car penetration rate is extremely high, physical stores have been hundreds of years of development history, department stores of various services have been quite mature
According to the living habits of European and American families, once a week to go out to buy, in a department store can purchase all the necessities of life, in this case, there is no need for online shopping.
4. Western countries attach great importance to employment issues, and naturally will not allow the development of e-commerce to have an impact on the employment of the real economy
In Western countries, successive presidents of elected countries have paid great attention to the will of the voters, especially the employment problem at home, because once the employment problem is not handled well, it will affect its support rate, and if it is not done well, there may be a situation in which the president will step down.
So, in Western countries, because physical stores can solve more people's employment and reduce unemployment. The e-commerce business only needs 1 or 2 people, with a computer and mobile phone, which can be opened immediately, and the contribution to solving employment is far less than that of physical stores. Therefore, the government will not allow the loss of jobs in the real economy due to the operation of e-commerce.
5. Western countries attach great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights, and the crackdown on infringing counterfeit and shoddy products is quite strong
Because the laws and regulations on intellectual property protection in Western countries are very perfect, cottage products rarely appear both offline and online, otherwise they will be fined and will face jail time. Therefore, the e-commerce platforms in Western countries are basically independent brands.
The mainland's e-commerce platform entry threshold is low, online shopping goods are mixed, cottage products emerge in an endless stream, although after regulatory rectification, disposal of fines, etc., but the online shopping process is still fake goods, counterfeit and shoddy products problem has always been difficult to cure.
In addition, Western countries have not given various preferential policies for e-commerce, and the mainland has given many preferential tax policies to e-commerce at the beginning of the rise of e-commerce in order to support the development of this emerging industry.
6, the people of Western countries have developed the habit of using credit cards to consume, and because the mobile payment business is not popular, people are not familiar with this consumption method
Western people are very concerned about personal privacy, because mobile payment needs to bind personal identity information, which will cause personal information leakage, which is also the most taboo thing for foreigners. So they still like to use the way of swiping cards to spend.
On the other hand, many banks in Western countries are private banks, and because mobile payment has affected the development of bank payment business, they are not willing to support the development of mobile payment business in order to protect their own interests. This also makes it very difficult to promote mobile payment services in Western countries.
In addition, mobile payments need to keep the network open and payments can only be completed if there is a signal. In this regard, due to the sparse population and the small number of base stations in Western countries, the signal situation is not good.
In contrast, China has now built the world's largest 5G network, with 916,000 5G base stations, accounting for 70% of the world. South Korea, the United States and Germany have only 250,000, 100,000 and 30,000 5G base stations, respectively, while Japan has less than 10,000.
epilogue
In short, the main reason why e-commerce in Western countries has not been promoted and popularized on a large scale is due to their own national conditions. Each country has its own special national conditions, so the economic development policies formulated must also follow objective economic laws and conform to the actual situation of the country, so that the national economy can always develop along the right track.