The Big Electricity Providers Are Fighting For Rural Electricity Providers.

Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) rural network "Qingyuan pilot" officially unveiled, Ma Yun, founder of Alibaba who had not participated in the activities for a long time, chose to go to the site as the platform.

6 days ago, in December 12th, Jingdong (NASDAQ:JD) announced its first Jingdong service store in Zhaoxian County, Hebei.

In addition to Alibaba and Jingdong, as early as more than 1 years ago, the Su Ningyun group (002024.SZ), which has the advantage of physical retail channels, has extended the tentacles of rural businesses.

In contrast with this lively atmosphere, a battle against the rural electricity market has started.

In late 2014, the three retailers announced the strategic planning of rural electricity providers.

Among them, Alibaba said that it will invest 10 billion yuan to make efforts to rural electricity providers, establish 1000 county-level operation centers and 100 thousand rural service stations; Suning cloud merchants hope that in 5 years, 1 000 suning.com service stations will be built, covering the township of 1/4.

If Alibaba, Jingdong and Suning merchants were doing street advertising in the countryside, it would be impossible to avoid a decisive battle.

The first pilot area of Alibaba was Zhejiang Province, and in Jiangsu province next to Zhejiang, the service station of sunning Yun has been rolled out.

Two neighboring provinces and two competing enterprises are likely to "wipe out fire" at any time.

In fact, in addition to the three retailers mentioned above, the domestic retail giants represented by big business groups and other enterprises are also joining in the "horse race enclosure" campaign around the rural electricity providers.

So, behind the "rural electric business movement" that farmers see slogans and the government can hear the strategic slogan, how does the real rural electricity business exist? Why do rural electric providers mostly adopt the O2O mode? What are the problems existing in rural electric business? Tencent finance takes this series of questions and visits the first step of Suning rural electric business, trying to solve the real veil of rural electric business behind the problem.

{page_break}

The story of Zhao Haibo and Xue Haixia

Zhao Haibo and Xue Haixia are the two shopkeepers of suning.com service station. They are also the real operators of Suning rural electricity providers in towns and villages.

After driving about half an hour's drive from Huaian, Jiangsu, Zhao Haibo can reach suning.com's service station on the main road side of Yuanji town.

This suning.com service station has a small area. The counter space provided to the merchandise is only less than 40 square meters.

Zhao Haibo said that it was such a small service station that joined the suning.com service station system at the end of September when it was reopened and opened. It even attracted more than 1000 people from the whole town to shop.

On the day of opening, sales of Zhao Haibo service station amounted to 53 thousand yuan.

Now, three months later, the highest daily sales of Zhao Haibo service station still have 20 thousand yuan, and the lowest sales amount is more than 1000 yuan.

Before joining the suning.com service station system, Zhao Haibo was a township artisan with about 10 years of experience in home appliances maintenance.

While repairing household appliances, he also made some sales agents for household electrical appliances.

In the past two or three years, Zhao Haibo found that the sale of home appliance sales is becoming more and more difficult.

The reason is due to the pparency of local commodity prices brought about by the rise of the retail mode of e-commerce.

"Electricity providers are very low in price, while rural consumers always like to compare prices when they buy things. At that time, my goods were taken from many agents, so there was no profit at all."

Zhao Haibo said.

As profit is getting thinner, sales of household appliance sales are also decreasing every day.

At the least, it is also less than 40 square meters of business area, sales less than 200 yuan a day.

Zhao Haibo's store is next to the market and main road of Yuanji town.

With such a good location, Zhao Haibo feels that business is getting worse and worse.

Just as he encountered business difficulties, an accidental opportunity, Zhao Haibo met suning.com local staff, and learned that suning.com in the development of rural electricity providers.

Without much consideration, Zhao Haibo decided to join suning.com service station.

In the three months after joining suning.com service station, Zhao Haibo made a turnover of about 150 thousand yuan.

The news spread rapidly around the villages and towns, and many people came to him to pick up the Scriptures and asked about their experience in joining suning.com service station.

{page_break}

Under such a background, Xue Haixia and his wife learned the news that they could join suning.com service station.

So the two couples took the initiative to find suning.com's local staff, then joined the suning.com service station.

Originally, two couples were doing wedding business in Zhang Zhuang village, and they were also selling daily chemicals and wedding products on weekdays.

After joining the suning.com service station, two couples positioned the store sales category to sell daily chemicals, wedding supplies, small household electrical appliances.

Join in

In the month of the service station, the two couples are groping together.

In January 2015, the two decided to upgrade the original store to further attract tourists from all over the world.

The secret of village O2O

Although the electricity supplier has a great impact on the retail sale of rural entities, the pure e-commerce sales mode has not found a typical development path in the locals, and this service station type O2O mode is more popular among the villages.

Zhao Haibo, who has just turned 30 years old in 2014, is a typical "80 generation" town youth. His hands are rough and his hands are solid.

When asked why it was so resolute to join the suning.com service station, Zhao Haibo said, "the impact of e-commerce on our small shop is so big that we have to jump over the middle link to make money."

Moreover, Suning has many years of history in our local stores, and the local people feel that big brands will not sell fake products.

Like Zhao Haibo, Mr. and Mrs. Xue Haixia believe that online shopping is constantly gaining popularity in rural consumer groups, but fake products are one of the most taboo consumer barriers to online shopping.

On the other hand, Zhao Haibo believes that the shopping habits of the farmers' consumption groups are just like seeing the genuine commodities.

"A lot of times, when customers come to my side, they have to check the price of three or four e-commerce enterprises on the Internet before deciding to buy it here.

At the same time, it would be better if I have the stock in stock and take it away directly, for fear that the fakes will be sent to the store after the order is bought online.

In addition, from the two small shops of Zhao Haibo and Xue Haixia, each store has the function of online shopping, and the two stores are combined with diversified businesses.

Besides selling home appliances, Zhao Haibo manages some washing liquid and other products on Suning platform.

Xue Haixia and his wife's stores are large in scale, besides operating wedding and related products, they also sell rent, express delivery and pick-up business.

{page_break}

For the reasons for diversification, Zhao Haibo said that the resources in the rural market are relatively limited. Diversified businesses can make the stores have a good collection effect, and will complement each other's formats. Only in this way can the business with a small starting stage achieve good returns.

Zhao Haibo, who has many years of experience in rural sales, seems to be the most important business tool in developing rural electric business.

"If you have a good reputation, repeat customers or guests who introduce them usually have more than 80% purchase rate."

When asked about the key factors in choosing shopping, a local consumer said that the price and quality of goods are two essential factors that need constant comparison.

But beyond that, the consumer finally thinks that no matter what.

Or price and quality, which are not as good as the word of mouth that someone recommends "good use of certain commodities".

At the same time, he also felt that in addition to word-of-mouth influence on consumption, service was also a crucial factor in deciding whether he would consume or not.

To this end, Zhao Haibo decided to absorb the experience of Xue Haixia and his wife's stores, hoping to provide free housing for sale to intermediary customers, in exchange for word of mouth.

At the same time, in his past sales, he also relied on his own maintenance and installation of household electrical appliances, and constantly to do his own word of mouth and services.

Realistic problems of rural electric business

Although Suning went to the countryside, he found Zhao Haibo and Xue Haixia's "iron fans", but there are still many problems in the process of development.

On the one hand, logistics must take account of the cost of return empty driving for rural distribution and delivery. On the other hand, most of the rural electric business sites, including Suning, Jingdong, Alibaba and other enterprises, are basically maintained at county level or township level, and have not really sunk to the rural level.

The latter issue may be a controversial issue in the industry.

Because sinking into the countryside may not be a worthwhile thing to do.

Because from the perspective of rural consumption habits and economies of scale, they are not feasible paths for rural electricity providers at this stage.

Suning is currently in the pilot stage to set up service points or purchase points instead of service stations in rural areas.

However, the problem of return logistics is a problem that rural electric providers have to consider.

After the full opening of the rural electricity market, distribution and distribution of small logistics will greatly test the service quality and efficiency of rural electric providers.

For this reason, many enterprises have taken action.

Take Suning as an example, Tencent finance learned that Suning logistics system will soon be socialized and open, so that it can not only undertake the distribution business inside the company, but also accept other companies' business, and at the same time, it can collect business from the local to improve the economic efficiency of comprehensive operation.

Developing open logistics platform is an important means to solve the cost and efficiency of logistics.