Development of Rural E-commerce from the Perspective of Agricultural New Kinetic Energy Cultivation: Based on Survey on the "E-commerce Entering Villages and Households" Project of Jurong City

Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry, Jurong 212400, China

Abstract Taking the implementation of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in Jurong City as an example, a survey plan is formulated, and questionnaires are designed. Through questionnaires, a large number of agricultural households are visited, and the data are collected and collated; and using interviews and field trips, the help of e-commerce for agricultural products sales is understood. Then, the analysis on the entire survey is summarized. Finally, the survey is researched, and it is found that the current rural e-commerce lacks professional talents and the product distribution system is not perfect. For existing problems, corresponding solutions are put forward.

Key words Rural e-commerce, Entering village and household, Agricultural product

1 Introduction

The central document No.1 in 2017 proposes to speed up the development of rural e-commerce and take "Internet + agriculture: as a driving force, so as to provide technical support for developing upgraded agriculture characterized with information support, synergistic management, efficient output, safety products, resource saving and environmental protection. The document points out to promote the structural reform of the agricultural supply side, optimize the agricultural industrial system, production system and management system, and increase land output rate, resource utilization and labor productivity, thereby promoting the transformation of agricultural and rural development from over-reliance on resource consumption and pursuit of meeting the demand for quantity to the pursuit of green ecological sustainability and more emphasis on quality, focusing on changes in market demand and taking increasing farmers’ income and ensuring effective supply as the main goals, improving the quality of agricultural supply as the main direction, and institutional reform and mechanism innovation as the fundamental approach, on the basis of ensuring national food security. The document also emphasizes that promoting the structural reform of the supply side of agriculture is a long-term process, and should handle government and market relations and coordinate interests in all aspects. In recent years, in the practice level of rural e-commerce, new phenomena and new changes have increased significantly. These new phenomena and new changes have brought together the new forces of rural e-commerce change. Expanding the sales of specialty agricultural products, opening up online stores and engaging in e-commerce in Jiangsu is a good channel. However, when individual farmers do e-commerce, there are often problems such as lag in information and independence of each other. On March 16, 2015, the launching ceremony of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" cooperation project between the Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry and the Jurong Municipal Government was held in the city’s cultural and art center. The "e-commerce entering villages and households" project is an important measure for the Jurong Municipal Government to implement the spirit of the central document No.1, cultivate new agricultural management entities and promote agricultural modernization, and it is also a concrete action for the college to strengthen school-enterprise cooperation and serve the economic and social development of Jurong.

Jurong is a key city for agricultural development in the province, and the jurisdictions such as Xiashu and Houbai fully and rationally utilize local agricultural and natural resources and social and economic resources. Especially in tea, strawberry and grape industries, the achievements are more remarkable, and related brands have been created. Maoshan Evergreen, Dingzhuang Grape,etc. are well-known brands. With the rapid development of e-commerce, Jurong rural committees cooperate with Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry, implement one-on-one assistance activities for college students, use their own advantages to initiate the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project, and transform the way of agricultural growth, and help more merchants to embark on the road of e-commerce of agricultural products. In addition, the Jurong Municipal Government and Alibaba have cooperated with each other to establish a rural Taobao service center and village-level service stations to provide services such as online sales, entrepreneurship cultivation and online purchasing. In order to understand the development status of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in Jurong City, this paper conducts an objective survey and analysis of the project. After three years of promotion and inspection, the project has made some achievements. In addition, this paper puts forward practical suggestions for the implementation of the project.

2 Literature review

E-commerce of agricultural products is a hot spot in the fields of academics and e-commerce in recent years. At the same time, under the influence of various aspects of agricultural productivity and market economic system, the market structure of agricultural products has undergone major changes, and the sales bottleneck of agricultural products has become more apparent. In turn, the actual demand for e-commerce of agricultural products has been formed. The research on the e-commerce model of agricultural products is gradually becoming a hot spot in the field of e-commerce.

Hu Bingchuan[1]has studied the development of rural e-commerce. It is believed that the rapid development of network and communication technology will contribute to the development of rural e-commerce. In the articleE-commerceinDevelopingCountries:Opportunitiesandchallengesforsmallandmedium-sizedenterprises, the World Trade Organization introduces the development of e-commerce, how poor countries can benefit from mobile Internet and how small and medium-sized enterprises can use e-commerce platforms to develop themselves. Li Lin[2]puts forward in the articleStudyonCirculationPatternandEfficiencyofFreshAgriculturalProductsthat the evolution of agricultural product circulation model is the result of the internal mechanism and external influence factors, and the internal mechanism of the evolution of the circulation model of fresh agricultural products is the result of the externalization and internalization of division of labor. The article believes that the evolution of China’s agricultural product circulation model will move toward the integration model of supply chain management; and the construction of agricultural product circulation mode should be adapted to local conditions, different regions should develop local agricultural product circulation models according to the local production, consumption environment and trading environment of fresh agricultural products, and the implementation of the supply chain circulation model cannot be forced. Fei Xiaoyu[3]studied the quality of electronic services provided by the website of agricultural products e-commerce and found that the convenience of online shopping has a greater impact on consumers’ willingness to purchase online products. He Dehuaetal.[4]believe that the quality and safety of products and the richness of information provided by websites are the main factors that significantly affect consumers’ willingness to purchase fresh agricultural products through the Internet, and the impact of price, packaging and logistics services on the willingness of consumers to purchase fresh agricultural products is not significant. Su Zhen[5]believes that China’s agricultural e-commerce construction is still at the stage of exploration; compared with countries with mature agricultural e-commerce, there is a big gap; and it is especially urgent to find an agricultural e-commerce model that is in line with China’s national conditions. It is necessary to consider and implement agricultural e-commerce construction from the bottom to the top, and do a good job in the environmental construction for agricultural e-commerce development, including the construction of agricultural information systems, the construction of agricultural e-commerce talents, and the establishment of a policy system[6].

Overall, domestic and foreign research on agricultural products e-commerce has experienced many years and has achieved fruitful results. The development trend and existing problems of agricultural products e-commerce are studied, and corresponding recommendations are put forward.

3 Basic overview of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in Jurong City

Jurong is a large agricultural county with high-quality and environmental-friendly agricultural products. In order to promote the development of agricultural e-commerce in Jurong City, on March 16, 2015, Jurong Municipal Government signed a contract with Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry. A total of 100 students of e-commerce major have been screened out and contacted to large farmer households to implement the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project. Through the docking with farmers, the one-on-one assistance policy is implemented. Using existing third-party platforms, online stores are built, and agricultural e-commerce is developed. Led by the Municipal Agriculture Committee, and assisted by the cadres in relevant townships and towns, the 100 college students went to farmer households, family farms, and leading agricultural enterprises to conduct face-to-face Internet knowledge publicity and guidance. Orchards, tea gardens, farmhouses, and farms in Jurong City are helped to build their own Taobao shops, websites, WeChat, Weibo and other e-commerce platforms to realize online sales and promotion.

First of all, the 100 college students of e-commerce major are divided into 50 groups with two in each group. Each group of college students are docked to two farmer households, leading agricultural enterprises or agricultural cooperatives. They are subjected to professional training by the Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry. Through the college students of e-commerce major, the farmers are helped to open Taobao shops and conduct website sales and network marketing. The training of Internet knowledge, conducted by the e-commerce experts of Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry, is organized regularly once a month to the farmers. The basic application platform for agricultural products e-commerce in Jurong City is established unifiedly to provide professional services such as professional art design, copywriting planning and shop decoration to the Taobao shops across the city.

In the 100 college students’ entering village and household activity, different townships and tows are allocated with different number of students. A total of twelve college students are distributed to Baitu Town, and each group contacting to each of the students has a contact leader. There is also a guidance group governed by the Agriculture Committee on these twelve groups. There are four people in each group, including a group leader. Finally, there are also Mr. Zhang Wei, the director of Baitu Town, and Tang Yuanshan, the instructor. In Biancheng Town, nine college students are allocated. They are contacted to nine group leaders, as well as three members of the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee, and the contact person of the town, Chen Xingmin, and the instructor Jiang Mingxing. There are seven college students in Guozhuang Town, and they are docked with seven contacts, as well as three members of the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee, and the town contact director Hua Xuncheng and instructor Wu Shoucheng. Houbai Town is allocated with sixteen college students in this activity. They are docked with sixteen people, as well as four members of the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee and the director of the town, Ling Dingkun and instructor Tong Fei. The number of college students distributed to Huayang Street is eleven. They are docked with eleven corresponding contacts, as well as three members of the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee and the town’s contact director Wang Yongming and instructor Hu Shijian. The number of college students in the development zone is six. They are docked with six corresponding contracts, as well as three members of the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee and the town’s contact director Ding Chuanyun and the instructor He Xian. There are eight college students in Maoguan Town, docking with eight corresponding contacts, three members of the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee and the town’s contact director Jing Huirong and instructor Xiong Yifu. Maoshan Town is distributed with ten college students. They are docked with 10 contacts, three members of the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee and the town’s contact director Wang Xiaojun and instructor Tang Sheng. There are twelve students in Tianwang Town, docking with 12 persons, four members of the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee and the town’s contact director Huang Yonggen and instructor Yang Hao. A total of four college students are allocated to Xiashu Town. They are docked with four contacts, three people in the steering group led by the Agriculture Committee and the town’s contact director Zhu Youming and instructor Li Yunfeng[7].

4 Survey on the status of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in Jurong City

4.1 Purpose of the surveyIn 2015, Jurong Municipal Government cooperated with Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry to carry out the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project. A total of 100 college students of e-commerce major are docked with large agricultural households in various townships and towns of Jurong City to carry out the assistance work. Now two years have passes, in order to understand the development status of the project, the sales situation of farmers, the farmers’ mastery of e-commerce knowledge, and the impact of e-commerce on the rural, a survey professional group is specially set up to conduct in-depth research and analysis on the project.

4.2 Process and method of surveyFirst, the respondents were divided into different groups. The farmer households in Baitu Town, Biancheng Town, Guozhuang Town and Houbai Town were surveyed. In this survey, a questionnaire on the implementation of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project was designed. Through questionnaires, the farmers were visited. The 100 college students were also asked to fill in the questionnaires, and then the questionnaires were recovered to analyze the results. Then, some of the farmer households and enterprises were visited randomly. The operation of e-commerce at the current stage was directly understood. Finally, some farmer households were randomly selected for interviews. Through direct communicating with the farmers, the assistance of e-commerce for the sales of farmers’ agricultural products was understood.

4.3 Results of the survey

4.3.1Age distribution of the respondents. Among the respondents, there were five respondents aged 20-30; there were 40 respondents under the age of 40; and there were 81 respondents over the age of 40, accounting for a large proportion (Table 1). It can be seen that the respondents were mostly middle-aged and aged.

Table 1 Age distribution of the respondents

4.3.2Educational degree distribution of the respondents. The educational degree of the respondents was analyzed statistically. Among them, the respondents with high school education or less accounted for 75%; the respondents with college degree accounted for 12%; and the respondents with undergraduate and graduate degrees accounted for 13%. Most of the respondents have an Internet age of 5-10 years, and a small number of farmers have an Internet age of more than 20 years (Fig.1).

Fig.1 Education level of rural business entities

4.3.3Respondents’ sales in the past 3 years. This survey compared the sales of various towns, especially that of Houbai Town, Tianwang Town, Xiashu Town and Maoshan Town. As shown in Fig.2, the sales of the four towns constantly increased during the two years. It can be seen that the implementation of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project has led to the development of economy in Jurong City. It has brought new sales channels and methods to farmers, and it also makes it unnecessary for farmers to go out to work. They can make a fortune by running an agricultural product e-commerce at home.

Fig.2 Changes in sales of the four towns

4.3.4Correlation analysis. The correlation between the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project and the increase in farmers’ income was analyzed. The results are shown in Table 2. As shown in Table 2, the both reached a significant correlation at the 0.01 level (bilateral), and the Pearson coefficient also reached 0.547. In other words, the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project has a promoting role for the increase in farmers’ income.

Table 2 Correlation between college students’ entering villages and households and rural annual income

Rural annualincomeEntering village andhousehold projectPearson correlation coefficient10.520∗Significance (bilateral)0.547∗N100100

Note:*indicates a significant correlation at the 0.01 level.

5 Analysis of the survey

5.1 Analysis of the construction of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in Jurong City

5.1.1Organizing targeted assistance and giving play to the advantages of cooperation. Since the implementation of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in Jurong City, 100 new agricultural production and management households were screened out, and they were docked with the 100 college students of e-commerce major from Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry to carry out one-to-one assistance work. Simultaneously, the Municipal Agriculture Committee of Jurong City has also selected professional technical personnel from the relevant unit to dock with each unit and set up a special steering group to coordinate the development of e-commerce work for farmers. Through the one-to-one targeted assistance policy, the college-enterprise cooperation advantages will be brought into play. At present, 185 new online shops have been built, represented by "Chuncheng Youli", "Tao Jurong", "Houbai Youpin" and "Xiashu Chachang".

5.1.2Cultivating demonstrations and guidance and supporting excellent models. At this stage, the development of rural e-commerce in Jurong City is still in the initial stage. However, through the extensive participation of farmers in various townships, the careful cultivation of Jiangsu Vocational College of Agriculture and Forestry and the vigorous promotion of the government, a large number of outstanding new brands such as "Chuncheng Youli", "Houbai Youpin" and "Yafu Youpin" have been established, and a provincial-level e-commerce demonstration village in Wuxing Village, Houbai Town has been formed. Among the seven administrative villages, Dingzhuang Village of Maoshan Town, Nitang Village of Baitu Town, Xifeng Village of Houbai Town, Duanwang Village of Guozhuang Town, Xiadian Village of Huayang Town and Daizhuang Village of Tianwang Town that applied for province-level e-commerce demonstration villages not long ago, Dingzhung Village of Maoshan Town has passed the approval[8].

5.1.3Unifying business model and integrating multiple platforms. At present, five e-commerce models have been formed initially in Jurong City. (i) Base + Taobao shop. For example, by making full use of the advantages and relying on the existing mature third-party e-commerce platform, Wang Jun has established Taobao shop and Wechat shop for his earthworm breeding base to sell the self-produced agricultural products. (ii) Authorized brand + Tmall shop. The Blue Sky Food Store is a well-known local brand. The major product of the store is Maobao Kudzu Tea. Using the Internet e-commerce model, it sells high-quality agricultural products. (iii) Taobao + public-welfare O2O platform. Jiangsu Jiugu Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd. has assisted Tianwang Town to build a public platform for O2O e-commerce services with the characteristics of township agricultural products, open an online store with the theme of "original taste and original hometown of Tianwang", and design and plan to build a display and experience center for agricultural products combining the local government. Third-party platforms are introduced to perform specific operations, thus unifying the sales and promotion of local high-quality agricultural products on the Internet. Platforms will develop uniform quality indicators, design, packaging, and promotion of the agricultural products, thus making efforts to provide local farmers with one-stop online marketing services. (iv) Base + O2O. The Chuncheng Agricultural E-commerce Industrial Park has opened an online store Tao Jurong through the demonstration of the base to achieve direct supply of fresh agricultural products. The Weilai Weihao Eco-Agriculture Co., Ltd. has been committed to providing pollution-free vegetables to various communities using the O2O model, relying on the 133.33-ha pollution-free vegetable base. There are currently 8 directly operated stores in Shanghai. By developing e-commerce, an O2O platform for e-commerce of fresh agricultural products has been created. (v) Self-built e-commerce platform. Yafu Youpin has established a comprehensive platform for integrated e-commerce service marketing of characteristic agricultural products in PC-end mall, WeChat mall and mobile-end mall, respectively. Through the O2O model, farmers are encouraged to open stores on the platform for independent sales[9].

5.2 Problems in the current stage of implementation of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in Jurong City

5.2.1Lack of relevant professional talents. The core of developing e-commerce is the talent factor. Jurong is a county-level city dominated by agriculture. The development of the information industry lags behind. The local youth often have low quality. Professionals who understand traditional agriculture and Internet operations are generally lacking. With the launch of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in 2015, today’s e-commerce companies mostly invite the professionals and teams in the first- and second-tier cities to participate in the operations through temporary high-paying jobs. The demand for high-quality skilled e-commerce talents in towns and villages will continue to increase. This urgently needs to speed up the pace of training local e-commerce talents in Jurong.

The entities currently engaged in agricultural management cover members of large professional agricultural households, major members of family farms, personnel of farmers’ professional cooperative organizations, personnel of agricultural product wholesale market, and agricultural product marketing brokers. However, their level of education is generally not high. People with an education level below high school accounted for 60%. Village officials with an education level of high school and undergraduate accounted for only 5%. In terms of age distribution, the age level was relatively high, and people over 45 years old accounted for 62%. This limits the development level of new agricultural management entities to a certain extent (Fig.3).

Fig.3 Classification of the rural business entities

5.2.2High costs of brand promotion on network. Due to the increasing market competition, many farmers have realized the importance of building agricultural products brands. The reputation and popularity of a brand is a necessary prerequisite for realizing brand value. It is of great significance for increasing the added value of agricultural products and expanding sales. Building a brand of agricultural products is a process in which the company continues to publicize and invest in the brand. For farmers, they don’t have the relevant technical staff and don’t know how to promote on the website, so they have to look for a promotion team to do it. Some simple network promotion is based on the amount of information published. The more the information released, the higher the charge. This requires to charge after agreeing on other conditions. Some network promotions are charged according to the time of publication. The earlier the information posted on the website is, the higher the charge is. Huge amount of publicity expense, narrow publicity, and backward brand propaganda means and other reasons have caused the agricultural products to be distinguishable and not strong.

5.2.3Lack of unified quality standards for agricultural products. At present, the city has not yet formulated unified agricultural product quality standards, quantifiable management standards, and normative safety traceability mechanism for reference and implementation of the e-commerce industry. These have hindered the development of local rural e-commerce.

5.2.4Imperfect distribution system of products. In recent years, with the continuous development of e-commerce, the infrastructure of logistics has become increasingly perfect. However, there are still problems in the logistics system of Jurong City. First, more agricultural products have a short shelf life, and they are difficult to be transported. Second, fresh fruit products have higher requirements for cold-chain logistics. The last mile of logistics to towns and villages has not been thoroughly opened, increasing the logistics cost of enterprises, leading to a decline in the efficiency of e-commerce enterprises.

6 Suggestions on the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project in Jurong City

6.1 Establishing a rural e-commerce leading group to establish a regular contact systemJurong City should establish a rural e-commerce development department, build communication platform between government, industry and enterprises, and improve grade distribution. Relevant cadres of townships and towns collectively set up e-commerce working groups, formulate relevant work systems, establish a linked steering group, and coordinate the work to fully promote the development of the "e-commerce entering villages and households" project.

6.2 Setting up special support funds to increase the support for e-commerceJurong City should set up special support funds for the development of e-commerce, which should be used for the training of e-commerce talents, set up a special e-commerce support group, conduct free training for farmers, give interest-free loans to entrepreneurs who have difficulty in starting capital, provide sales incentives for companies with e-commerce development and progress, and improve the facilities of Jurong E-commerce Pioneer Park to create a good entrepreneurial environment for entrepreneurs. At the same time, in response to the problem of high cost of brand network promotion, the government should give special funds in the early stage, focusing on supporting organic rice in Tianwang, strawberry in Baitu and grape in Dingzhuang to help them to enhance the brand’s visibility in packaging, design and promotion, and play a demonstration role.

6.3 Establishing a vocational qualification access system to foster e-commerce talentsIn order to accelerate the accumulation of human resources in the field of rural e-commerce and solve the problem of lack of talents for the rural e-commerce development in Jurong, led by the government department, Jurong City should focus on cultivating rural e-commerce talents from two aspects. First, Jurong City should give full play to the advantages of resources in universities and enterprises in the territory, strengthen the popularization of rural e-commerce, and increase the training of new skilled farmers to cultivate their e-commerce business philosophy. Simultaneously, in the fields of online store operation and promotion, art design and data analysis, it should conduct technical training and course assessment for agricultural product brokers, agricultural cooperative leaders, township liaisons and other agriculture-related subjects, and establish corresponding rural e-commerce professional qualification access system to improve its entry barriers. Second, on the basis of the professional qualification access system, it should accelerate the cultivation of high-quality skilled e-commerce talents, make efforts to introduce "Yafu-style" agriculture-related e-commerce expert teams, strengthen policy support, give multiple guarantees in research and entrepreneurship start-up funds, housing subsidies, and employment for children to makes them stabilize in Jurong and play a model role in the development of rural e-commerce in Jurong[10].

6.4 Formulating and standardizing the quality standards for e-commerce of agricultural productsJurong City should establish a professional traceability system and product evaluation system to measure the quality standards of agricultural products at a professional level[11]. Every link of the cultivation process of agricultural products must be recorded in detail. On the products, the name of the producers and the date of manufacture must be marked. Thus, consumers can trace the production process of each agricultural product according to the record, and monitor the entire process of production, circulation and sales of agricultural products, smoothing the logistics channels of agricultural products from beginning of planting to completion of sales, thereby improving distribution efficiency and reducing the logistics cost of agricultural products[12].

7 Conclusions

The impact of college students’ entering villages and households on the development of rural e-commerce in Jurong is effective and significant. Rural e-commerce is an important means of transforming the way of rural development. By accelerating development, real economy and the Internet will produce a superposition effect, which is conducive to innovating rural business model, promoting consumption, expanding domestic demand, promoting rural development and farmers’ incomes increase, and boosting the development of modern agriculture in Jurong, allowing Jurong to strive to take the lead in realizing the development goal of agricultural modernization in Jiangsu Province.