Research on the Brand Construction of Agritourism Enterprise in Chongqing

College of Economics and Management, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China

1 Introduction

Agritourism is a new development mode which integrates tourism industry and modern agriculture, and the integration of agriculture and tourism is not only the growth point of modern agriculture, but also the new type of tourism that the consumers are in hot pursuit of. At the national level, the 13th Five-Year Development Plan takes it as a key project to cultivate. Under this background, all kinds of agritourism enterprises are rapidly developed, and business model also changes from extensive model to modern enterprise management model. In the modern enterprise management, brand building has an extremely important function for the sustainable development of enterprises and the cultivation of core competitiveness. However, there are few researches about the brand construction of leisure agriculture enterprise. In the process of the agritourism enterprise development, the managers lack relevant theoretical guidance, and it is difficult to achieve the combination of theory and practice. With China’s economic and social development, it is urgent to speed up the implementation of modern agricultural brand strategy, and vigorously promote the brand of modern agriculture.

2 Concept

2.1AgritourismAgritourism , as it is defined most broadly, involves any agriculturally based operation or activity that brings visitors to a farm or ranch. Agritourism has different definitions in different parts of the world, and sometimes refers specifically to farm stays, as in Italy. Elsewhere, agritourism includes a wide variety of activities, including buying produce direct from a farm stand, navigating a corn maze, slopping hogs, picking fruit, feeding animals, or staying at a bed and breakfast on a farm. Agritourism is a form of niche tourism that is considered a growth industry in many parts of the world, including Australia, Canada, the United States, and the Philippines. Agritourism, as a combination of modern agriculture and leisure tourism, and a new pattern to promote rural economic development, is committed to the basic functions associated with economy, society, education, ecology, cultural heritage and others aspects. Agritourism enterprises create agricultural products and tourism products. At the same time, leisure and sightseeing agricultural products also have double attributes.

2.2BrandbuildingFrom a marketing point of view, Philip Kotler said, "The brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of use, its purpose is to identify a particular seller or group of sellers of products or services, and make the same products and services apart from the open competition." According to Philip Kotler’s analysis, the brand contains 6 meanings, and there are attributes, interests, values, culture, personality and users. The attribute refers to a brand to bring the specific function. Leisure and sightseeing agriculture is tourism activity occurring in the village, and leisure and experience is the core and unique selling point of agritourism enterprise as a whole, including the natural ecological landscape, agricultural production, reflecting the agricultural cultural tradition and modern mode of production and way of life. For agritourism, the interest is property turned into functional and emotional benefits. In leisure agriculture park, visitors can not only enjoy the countryside scenery and experience the feeling of returning to nature, but also experience farming, taste and buy souvenirs and other fresh products. Value is embodied in the brand of enterprise, and agritourism enterprise, as a conservative, stubborn guardian, embodies its own brand in the quality of life, traditional culture and folk custom. The culture means that the brand contains some kinds of symbolic culture, such as minority farming culture and mountain culture. Personality means that a brand has its own characteristics, and others can not imitate it. Users reflect the characteristics of the consumer groups, and different brands have different consumers. Therefore, the brand is not merely a name of the enterprise, and it is composed of multilayer content. The most important is the value, culture and personality of the brand, and they determine the basis of the brand.

3 The importance of brand building in agritourism enterprise

For an enterprise, brand is source of vitality and competitiveness. Whether the agricultural products and tourism services provided by the agritourism enterprise can meet the needs of consumers or not, depends on the business activities that help to cultivate its core competitiveness, and build a unique enterprise brand.

3.1TheimportanceofbrandbuildingofagritourismenterpriseinChongqingCityDuring the 12th Five-Year Plan period, there were 0.446 billion people going to Chongqing for rural tourism, and it achieved total income of 78 billion, and in 2015, there were 0.12 billion people going to Chongqing for rural tourism, creating income of 21 billion yuan, with year on year growth of 20% and 10.5%, respectively. By the end of 2015, there were more than 389 thousand people in Chongqing engaged in rural tourism management, technology, service, production, sales and service, driving the transfer of 400 thousand rural labor forces, and making nearly 300 thousand farmers get rich. Chongqing has created 8 national leisure agriculture and rural tourism demonstration counties, 23 demonstration counties, 14 national landscape tourist towns, and 7 famous villages. Significant progress has been made in the development of agritourism enterprise, but the brand building is still inadequate. Among 274 national leisure agriculture and rural tourism demonstration enterprises (Star Park) in 2015, Chongqing’s agritourism enterprise is not on the list.

Fig.1 The leisure agriculture and rural tourism star demonstration enterprises in some provinces (2015)

3.2PromotingagritourismenterprisebrandconstructionistheinevitablechoiceofconsumptionupgradeWith the continuous development of China’s economy, the level of residents’ consumption continues to increase, and the demand for agricultural products and tourism products is increasing. Agritourism enterprise not only provides agricultural products, but also other products extremely attractive to consumers. Many consumers choose agritourism park consumption, because under work stress, they hope to use leisure time to experience the joy of labor in the field, and fully enjoy nature’s gift. These meet the psychological needs of consumers. Through the consumer advocacy, it is necessary to establish the brands with good reputation. Through the establishment of brand-oriented business philosophy, it can make consumers have better brand awareness, and use brand as an important intangible asset to establish a good corporate image, in order to adapt to the needs of consumers.

3.3PromotingthebrandconstructionofagritourismenterpriseisafavorableguaranteeforsustainabledevelopmentWith the continuous improvement of people’s living standards, more and more forms of leisure agriculture continue to appear, and agritourism enterprises must establish their own unique brand, in order to get the advantage in the increasingly fierce competition in the market. On the one hand, brand building is a favorable guarantee for sustainable development, and the linkage effect of the brand can promote the sustainable development of leisure tourism agriculture. On the other hand, leisure agriculture belongs to ecological tourism, and when the consumers conduct the sightseeing tour, the sightseeing agriculture may depend on the agricultural industry organization. There is a need to strengthen the cultivation of crops, promote water save irrigation, improve agricultural technology and product added value, to achieve self-sufficiency, and provide consumers with a new perspective in order to promote the development of modern agricultural industry. Agritourism must adhere to the principle of sustainable development and green consumption, in order to attract a steady stream of consumers to experience.

3.4PromotingthebrandconstructionofagritourismenterpriseisanimportantmeanstoparticipateinmarketcompetitionWith the continuous development of rural tourism, more and more agritourism enterprises continue to emerge just like bamboo shoots, but the development is restricted by the region, and most of the parks attract tourists only through acquaintances’ introduction, due to the low quality of service. The quality of employees is relatively low, and the park lacks experience and leisure. It is difficult to attract customers and form customer loyalty. Brand has distinguishing effect. For consumers, through the product brand, once they reach the consumer satisfaction, they will focus on the brand consumption experience stored in the memory and future consumption decision forms basis. In this way, we can establish brand loyalty and establish competitive advantage in the ecological tourism market to occupy a certain market share.

4 Problems in the brand building of agritourism enterprise

4.1BrandconceptisbackwardandbrandawarenessneedstobestrengthenedAgritourism enterprise is the product of the continuous development of China’s modern agriculture, and tourism and agriculture are in the crossing point of the emerging industries. Agritourism enterprise provides leisure tourism for people, and brings rich knowledge of agriculture, and experience of agricultural production and dynamic and peasant life, so as to promote the development of green industry in local areas. But most agricultural parks mainly depend on the primary industry. Except part of the park management personnel, most practitioners are farmers who have been long engaged in the primary industry, and the business mode and management concept is relatively backward. They do not have a clear understanding of agritourism enterprise. Although it does not cause negative effects in a short period of time, the brand concept behind leads to vicious competition in the market in the long term, thereby causing bad consumer experience and hindering the long-term development of agritourism enterprise. A lot of agritourism enterprises do not register trademarks, so it is difficult to distinguish them effectively.

4.2AgritourismenterpriseproductslackconnotationandqualityofserviceneedstoimproveUnder normal circumstances, the motivation of consumers for experiencing the agritourism enterprise is to reduce the work pressure, make oneself in the busy work get temporary relaxation; enhance the family ties, strengthen the understanding and interaction of social relations; increase social experience, agricultural knowledge, and understand different customs and cultures; meet the shopping needs. Consumer’s main purpose is to appreciate the countryside scenery, experience the feeling of returning to nature, experience and understand rural farming, visit the high-tech agriculture, look for the feeling of nostalgia, taste the local specialties, and purchase fresh agricultural products, etc. Therefore, the motivation of consumer travel product design is very important, and if you want to achieve these motivations, agritourism enterprise must increase the connotation of agricultural tour of fusion products, improve the quality of service, to provide consumers with good sightseeing and experience. Agritourism enterprise development needs natural environment and agricultural culture, and also needs the convenience of transportation and accommodation conditions. Even in some areas where industrial construction is perfect, the constraints of infrastructure result in weak consumer reception ability. In terms of services, agritourism enterprise has some problems in the details, for example, fruit picking is the main type of tourism products, and in the process of picking, a lot of fruits are wasted, which is not conducive to the sustainable development of industrial parks. In addition, a lot of recreational fishery experience lacks relevant protective measures, which is harmful to the consumer safety. The tourism product service quality of agritourism enterprise is determined by the quality of the staff, and at present, most service personnel of leisure and sightseeing agriculture are local farmers, lacking systematic training before they begin work. The professional quality, professional skills and service consciousness are not perfect, so it is difficult to adapt to the needs of modern agriculture and tourism.

4.3AgritourismenterpriselacksthecorecompetitivenessandbrandpotentialneedstobeexcavatedThe concept of core competence was developed in 1990 by C. K. Prahalad. The core competence owned by the enterprise can enable the enterprise to have the competitive advantage of the inherent capacity of resources in a shopping mall. Performance in products, technology, service and organization is important for enterprises to master the unique resources, core technology, system, and sustainable innovation ability. For a long time, few of China’s modern agricultural enterprises form their own core competitiveness. In the increasingly fierce market competition, agritourism enterprises’ service products have a serious "homogenization" phenomenon in the process of the brand development. They focus on brand strategy to develop modern agriculture, but do not form their own unique core competitiveness in the course of business activities; there is no obvious difference in experience projects, agricultural varieties, and marketing activities. Leisure agriculture experience lacks regional characteristics, and is divorced from local human geography and customs. It lacks innovative experience for the project and agricultural products, and these business services lead to vicious competition homogenization, greatly shortening the product life cycle, so it is difficult to take the initiative in the fierce market competition.

5 Conclusions

The construction of agritourism enterprise brand is a long-term and complicated system project, and we can not cultivate brand core competitive ability in a short time. After many years of development, China’s agricultural brand has entered a new historical stage. There are both rare opportunities, difficulties and challenges in the process of modern agricultural branding, and agritourism enterprise owners must grasp the regularity of agricultural brand building, and have a clear idea of development, to achieve the overall promotion of modern agricultural brand.

6 Recommendations

6.1ChangingmanagementconceptandestablishingbrandawarenessThe construction of the brand image is to be distinguished from other homogeneous products, and brand awareness is the foundation of brand building. Establishing a good brand image is the goal of brand building. On the one hand, the operators of leisure tourism agriculture park need to change the concept of management, from the traditional family business model to the modern management mode of operation. In the process of the development, the enterprises must make unified plan, refuse blind imitatation and vicious competition. On the other hand, it is necessary to fully understand the importance of the brand, and accurately position and design the brand. Brand positioning needs to consider demand of customers, and products and services also need uniqueness. There is a need to develop appropriate tourism services and adapt to the ecological environment, resource endowments, and geographical location. Product image design should make the name of the product be concise, vivid, and catchy, and park managers should strengthen the management of brand image, and constantly improve the brand image.

6.2ImprovingqualityofservicebasedontheprincipleofcustomersatisfactionAgritourism enterprise needs to improve service quality, strengthen the scenic area planning, product development, service facilities, construction safety, service quality and so on. In the process of construction of agritourism enterprise, managers need to change and design unique product service according to the market demand; strengthen the teaching of basic knowledge of agriculture, to make tourists realize the difference between leisure agriculture and traditional farmhouse, and enable consumers to release work pressure and realize the pastoral dream; carry out training for employees, pay attention to the details of the scenic spot, emphasize security awareness, and improve the quality of service, to create a simple, leisurely consumer environment for consumers, improve customer satisfaction, promote the healthy and orderly development of the park; develop differentiated competitive strategy to meet the diverse needs of consumers.

6.3StrengtheningtheconstructionofculturalconnotationofagritourismenterpriseBrand connotation reflects the core value of the brand, and essence of corporate culture. Brand strategy needs to consider the customs, and farmers in different regions form their different agricultural civilization in the long term agricultural production. The farming culture contains the Confucian culture, and farming has also become a whole with religious culture. Farming culture has formed its own unique cultural content and features, including language, drama, folk songs, customs and various types of ritual activities, which are most widely used cultural types. In the implementation of the brand strategy, we must consider these factors in order to increase the cultural connotation of products and services, and inherit the ancient culture and civilization of China. Employees should also fully reflect the core value of agricultural enterprise concept in service and management, respect and protect agricultural culture, regulate and guide the behavior of tourists, in order to promote the harmony between man and nature. Green tourism and ecological experience is an important part of agritourism enterprise brand building.

6.4StrengtheningmarketingeffortstopromotethemarketinfluenceAgritourism enterprise managers should handle the relationship with various aspects, and make full use of the current resources to carry out publicity. First of all, it is necessary to establish corporate advertising platform, use a variety of ways to combine a variety of levels of publicity and promotion, invite the media to enter the park for tourism experience, carry out promotional activities through the traditional festivals, and increase brand influence through cooperation with travel agencies, enterprises and institutions. Secondly, it is necessary to establish a professional network platform to promote the informatization and standardization of brand construction.