Study on the Development of Rural E-Commerce against the Backdrop of Rural Revitalization

Under the trend of “Internet+”, the analysis of the development of rural e-commerce will reveal some of its deficiencies such as a single booster, the lack of standards of the products, the difficulties of building the local logistics system, as well as the lack of effective distribution stations. The paper will dis-cuss the current development situation of rural e-commerce, especially the bot-tlenecks in the development process, and will propose a “Four-Step” strategy to break the deadlock from the perspective of rural revitalization. Those steps are as follows: firstly, improve the traceability system of product quality to boost consumer confidence; secondly, give play to comparative advantages and create regional agricultural brands with distinguishing features; thirdly, take the big data center of rural e-commerce as the fulcrum to lever the inventory of agricultural products; lastly, bring about the innovation and upgrading of related industries as well as industrial transformation and reconstruction to further promote the revitalization of rural areas.


Introduction
In recent years, the per capita disposable income and actual consumption expenditure of rural residents in China have been growing at a higher rate than that of urban residents, which manifests that the upgrading of rural consumption has been gradually accelerating. At the same time, the number of netizens in rural areas has been increasing year by year, with the proportion of the total number of netizens in China increasing from 26.5% in 2011 to 28.4% in 2015,

The Current Situation of Rural E-Commerce in China
1) The capacity of rural online shopping market has been amplified In 2017, the retail revenue of rural physical products nationwide totaled 78.66 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.1%, accounting for 14.28% of the country's total.
Relevant experts predicted that the compound growth rate of the number of rural e-commerce parcels will reach 46% in 2018-2020. Rural e-commerce will become a vital engine for the development of regional economies in many areas.
Related data shows that in 2015, the total volume of China's rural e-commerce market reached 353 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 94.3%, accounting for 9.3% of the whole online shopping market; in 2016, it reached 660.8 billion yuan. It is estimated that by the end of 2018 China's rural e-commerce market will reach 1261.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36%, accounting for 19.4% of the online shopping market. By the end of 2020, China's rural e-commerce market will reach 1.6919 billion yuan.

2) Intensified market competition of rural e-commerce industry
With the escalation of price competition in the domestic market, overseas purchases have come to market in succession. This year, under the pressure of a sharp drop in investment returns, a reduction in demographic dividends, rising costs in labor force and a rigid rise of costs in aging and environmental pollution, the potential growth rate of China's economy has been decreasing. On the contrary, there has been a gradually accelerated growth in the rural market, which is sprayed with strangling warfare among e-commerce giants. Therefore, rural e-commerce has been developing by leaps and bounds, which is playing an important role in leading domestic consumption demand of rural areas, reshaping the industrial structure, as well as promoting coordinated development of urban and rural areas. An increasing number of people of insight have gradually recognized the opportunities for the prospect of rural e-commerce. Many major e-commerce companies have deployed their strategies in rural areas one after another, such as Alibaba, JD, and Suning, which all regard rural areas as one of their targeted market. For example, Alibaba projected the "Thousand Counties and Ten Thousand Villages" plan, which means that investing 10 billion yuan to establish 2000 county-level operation centers and 200,000 village-level small service stations. Based on its original distribution station, JD also invested 5 billion RMB in 2200 districts and counties across the country to establish its own warehouse and logistics system, and launch county-level service centers and "JD Gang" service stations. By the end of 2017, it has realized the nationwide cover-

The Bottlenecks during the Development of Rural E-Commerce
Currently, rural e-commerce not only plays a leading role in "transporting industrial products to the countryside", to enrich farmers' consumption options, 2) The lack of standards of rural e-commerce products The quality standards for the products sold on network platforms are not unified. At present, many e-commerce platforms of agricultural products are facing a difficulty that they have not reached a break even. This phenomenon is closely related to relatively low overall quality of agricultural products and not unified quality standards of products on those platforms. The cyclical characteristics plus diversified types without unified standards of agricultural products made it difficult to categorize green agricultural products, organic agricultural products, pollution-free agricultural products, and China's geographical indication products ("three kinds of products and one indication product"). Therefore, the products sold on those platforms cannot satisfy consumer, who pursue high-quality and healthy agricultural products [2].
3) It is difficult to build a logistics system within the same city China has a vast territory with relatively scattered rural residents, who have low commercial awareness. Besides, poor basic infrastructures, decentralized competition-free advantages, long production cycles of agriculture-related products, long chains, and asymmetric information made it is difficult to control the supply chain of agricultural products. Some companies try to integrate the business flow, persuade the distributors to put the product online, and then centralize the distribution according to the online orders, so that dealers focus on sales, e-commerce operators handle logistics, thereby reducing transportation costs and improving distribution efficiency. However, most dealers，who have independent warehouses and distribution systems, are unwilling to invest in cost and energy, which makes it difficult to build a local logistics system [3].
4) The lack of effective "distribution stations" in the rural logistics system On the one hand, the overall distribution area is very broad. In order to achieve full coverage of rural outlets, some enterprises have established service vehicles that provide long-term delivery services, some companies even have only 3 vehicles. After receiving an online order, the company determines the delivery route based on the distance of the location and the quantity, which greatly limits the distribution efficiency and has caused dissatisfaction among service station workers. On the other hand, despite ignoring low efficiency of centralized distribution, some companies have long been in a state of deficit due to problems such as too long a one-way transportation route. Among the service stations established within the county, the farthest one needs to detour about 100 kilometers to reach, such a long distance makes the distribution cost really high. We can learn from this phenomenon that the "last mile" of logistics system in rural areas is still a difficulty. The way to solve this problem may not be to set up service stations in each village, but to establish truly effective cargo distribution points.

The Countermeasures to Break the Dilemma
As China's economy enters the stage of new normal, rural area is in urgent need of solving the problem of selling agricultural products with high speed, freshness, and quality guaranteed. At present, the "structure adjustment and capacity reduction" advocated in the supply-side structural reform, provides a new direction and path for solving the current dilemma of rural e-commerce and promoting the development of e-commerce platform [4].
1) Improve the traceability system of product quality to boost consumer confidence The traceability system of agricultural products, which is not only the source of products, but also ensures the product quality to build consumers' confidence, is an important form of guarantee for providing consumers with high-quality, healthy and nutritious agricultural products. Therefore, new-type of agricultural management entities such as family farms, specialized households, farmers' cooperatives, and industrialized leading agricultural enterprises should all together play a pivotal role in jointly building a source tracing system for rural agricultural products, by relying on the network trading platform of rural e-commerce and complying with the trend of development, to improve the quality of agricultural products and increase consumers' confidence towards agricultural products.
2) Give full play to the comparative advantages and create regional agricultural brands with distinctive features Firstly, priority should be given to developing e-commerce of agricultural products with comparative advantages or regional characteristics to comprehen-