On October 23-24, 2021, the "China Retail Circle Conference and 2021 Fresh Retail Development Forum" hosted by the Circulation Industry Promotion Center of the Ministry of Commerce and the Retail Circle was held in Jiangsu Baima Agricultural International Expo Center.
Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of Ai Media Consulting, was invited to attend the conference and released the "2021 China Agricultural Products E-commerce Development Report" on the spot. The report uses the data mining results of Ai Media's big data decision-making and intelligent analysis system to gain insight into the development status of agricultural product e-commerce, and makes a detailed analysis and interpretation around the investment and financing data, sales model, and user consumption behavior of agricultural product e-commerce, and jointly looks forward to the future development trend of the agricultural product e-commerce market.
The agricultural products e-commerce market has developed rapidly, with online retail sales of nearly 800 billion yuan in 2021
In recent years, the development of the entire agricultural industry chain in China has accelerated. According to data from iiMedia Research, China's total agricultural output value has been rising in the past 10 years, reaching 6581.573 billion yuan in 2018 and 10.7 trillion yuan in 2020.
Combined with the emergence of endless new models, China's agricultural goods consumption is entering a stage of transformation, coupled with policy assistance, China's agricultural goods online channels are developing rapidly. The data shows that the consumption scale of China's agricultural products in online channels has been expanding, reaching 610.7 billion yuan in 2020 and is expected to reach 789.3 billion yuan in 2021.
Zhang Yi believes that the e-commerce platform represented by Pinduoduo actively promotes the sales of agricultural goods in online channels, while emerging formats such as live e-commerce and grouping enable agricultural goods to reach larger consumers, so its online retail sales have risen rapidly year by year.
In fact, the supply and demand contradiction between the insufficient supply of high-quality agricultural products and the lack of marketing channels of products in China has existed for a long time, and in recent years, major platforms have vigorously expanded the sinking market, and have developed the agricultural goods e-commerce market from multiple levels such as talent, technology, and finance, which has provided help to alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand of agricultural goods, accelerate the efficiency of agricultural goods circulation, and help farmers increase their income.
The layout of the agricultural goods e-commerce platform sinks the market, which helps to promote the access of agricultural goods to the network and drive the upward movement of agricultural goods, access more agricultural goods resources for the demand side, and drive the continuous upgrading and development of the supply side. At the same time, consumer demand for agricultural products continues to escalate, helping agricultural goods to establish brand operations, which is also an important point for e-commerce platforms in the future.
Residents' agricultural consumption has begun to prefer online channels, and more choices and affordability are the main reasons
According to ai media consulting and research data, the netizens surveyed prefer to consume agricultural goods in online channels, accounting for 32.72%; Among them, local life and e-commerce platforms are the main places for online consumption, accounting for 56.0% and 51.0% respectively.
Zhang Yi believes that under China's new consumption ecology, agricultural goods sales penetrate into more channels, especially the development of related industrial chains such as logistics and distribution, so that agricultural goods can be better integrated into online platforms and realize e-commerce. In the case of continuous optimization of online retail services and habit formation, consumers are more inclined to consume agricultural goods online.
For online consumption of agricultural products, the choice of more and affordable is the main reason why netizens consider it. According to the data, 51.8% and 48.2% of the surveyed netizens preferred to consume agricultural goods online because of the large number of preferential activities and cheap prices. From the perspective of consumption frequency and category, nearly half of the respondents consume online agricultural goods more than 4 times a week, and fruit and vegetable products account for the mainstream, accounting for 55.2%.
At present, consumers mainly consume agricultural goods online from the platform operated by mature e-commerce enterprises, the overall service experience is better, and the stickiness to the use of the platform is also higher. According to the survey results, 76.5% and 70.5% of the surveyed netizens respectively expressed their willingness to consume on the same online agricultural goods consumption platform and recommend it to others.
With the improvement of people's living standards, consumers' demand for brand goods has increased, and the brands formed by agricultural goods in the process of long-term development are mainly brands of origin, which have a greater impact on consumer choice. Among them, 41.0% of the netizens surveyed said that they would give special consideration to the agricultural goods of the origin brand, of which the online channel was the most important channel for them to purchase the agricultural goods of the origin brand, accounting for nearly half.
It is worth mentioning that at this stage, the netizens surveyed are more dissatisfied with the richness of agricultural goods that can be consumed, with 59.7% and 42.4% of the surveyed users respectively believing that they can only consume agricultural goods from less regions and categories.
Zhang Yi believes that although more agricultural goods can directly reach consumers under the promotion of e-commerce platforms, consumers have greater demand for the richness of agricultural goods under the trend of quality consumption. In the future, it is still necessary to strengthen the support role of e-commerce platforms in the retail of agricultural goods, combine innovative business forms and logistics systems to expand the radius of agricultural goods circulation, and optimize from both the supply and demand ends.
In addition, quality and logistics are urgent areas for improvement in agricultural e-commerce. Ai Media Consulting data shows that 52.5% of the respondents believe that the agricultural goods e-commerce platform needs to improve in terms of checking the quality of agricultural goods, and 37.2% of the respondents said that the agricultural goods e-commerce platform needs to optimize the quality of logistics services. With the further development of residents' online purchase habits of agricultural goods, their demand for online purchase experience will continue to upgrade, improve product quality, and optimize logistics services are expected to become an important starting point for future e-commerce platforms to compete for users.
The e-commerce platform promotes the upward role of agricultural goods, and live e-commerce will stimulate new vitality in agricultural goods consumption
From the current point of view, in the case of the state actively promoting poverty alleviation and the development of rural areas, e-commerce platforms are playing a major role in promoting the upward development of agricultural goods.
On the one hand, China's e-commerce industry is mature, the relevant supporting measures are perfect, consumers develop online consumption habits, and the head e-commerce platform can effectively integrate all links of the agricultural goods industry chain, optimize the retail model of agricultural goods, and promote the standardization and brand development of agricultural goods. On the other hand, the new e-commerce platform represented by Pinduoduo has driven a new consumption trend of agricultural goods through model innovation, and the contact between agricultural goods producers and users is more direct, so as to realize the large-scale delivery of agricultural goods to consumption places.
In addition, in recent years, emerging e-commerce formats such as interactive e-commerce and live e-commerce have grown rapidly, bringing new development directions to the consumption of agricultural goods. Compared with other e-commerce models, live e-commerce has the advantages of shorter communication paths and higher efficiency, and all four parties of merchants, platforms, anchors and consumers will benefit.
Zhang Yi said that on the supply side, new formats such as live streaming can enable agricultural goods to directly connect with consumers, and the retail venue has also shifted from offline stores and e-commerce platforms to a more direct private domain traffic pool; On the demand side, the rise of interactive new e-commerce enables users to achieve agricultural consumption at preferential prices, enhance consumer desire, and also exert their interaction, social and game value, so that more potential consumers can quickly reach agricultural goods. Driven by various models, China's agricultural market will usher in a stage of rapid growth, and Pinduoduo's "farmland cloud spelling" is expected to evolve into a C2F model on a large scale.