Food Traceability: A Breaking Battle in the Fresh Food E-commerce Market

1. Fresh food becomes the next e-commerce blue ocean market. After years of rapid development, the e-commerce industry has become overwhelmingly unstoppable. The scale ranges from a single website to a comprehensive platform to vertical e-commerce, and the model ranges from B2B to B2C, C2C to O2O. Internet giants such as Alibaba and JD.com have spawned, and all walks of life are also flooded with e-commerce, ushering in the era of national e-commerce. However, the food and fresh food market has always been a piece of fat that e-commerce giants, including e-commerce entrepreneurs, are vying for. It is known as a blue ocean market with a trillion-level transaction scale, and the competition in this field is also abnormal. fierce. From 2005 to 2008, fresh food e-commerce companies used the Internet more as a marketing channel. During this period, fresh food e-commerce companies were in the embryonic stage, and there were few very successful cases. During the period from 2008 to 2012, a large number of fresh food e-commerce companies emerged, but most of them copied the ordinary e-commerce model, and did not take into account the uniqueness of fresh food e-commerce, and eventually many companies closed down. Since 2012, with the real rise of the mobile Internet, the traffic guidance of fresh food e-commerce platforms by social media, especially 'Ben Lai Life' has become popular with the event marketing of 'Chu Orange Entering Beijing'. In response to the outbreak of fresh food e-commerce, in addition to the fresh food e-commerce of comprehensive e-commerce platforms such as Ali and JD.com, SF Express, No. 1 Fresh, Benlai Life, Tuotuo Commune, Meiliqiqi, Futian, A large number of vertical fresh food e-commerce platforms such as Caiguanjia have begun to gain the favor of venture capital. Food and fresh fruits and vegetables are necessities of life, with high customer stickiness, high gross profit, and high return rate. At present, the proportion in e-commerce is less than 1%, which is far lower than other categories. The market demand is large. Fresh food e-commerce is the next e-commerce outlet. Research data confirms this judgment: In 2014, China’s fresh food e-commerce transaction volume was 28.98 billion yuan, and in 2015 was 54.4 billion yuan, an increase of 87.7% year-on-year. According to analysis, In 2016, the scale of transactions will reach 91.39 billion yuan, and in 2017, the scale of China's fresh food e-commerce transactions will exceed 140 billion yuan. 2. Quality and safety make fresh food e-commerce hard to crack. In the long run, fresh food e-commerce is a vast blue ocean. However, fresh food e-commerce is also known as the hardest piece of hard bones in the e-commerce market. Different from the electronic products, daily necessities or processed food sold by traditional e-commerce, fresh food e-commerce is a castle that e-commerce companies and entrepreneurs have not conquered for so many years, and there are difficulties that fresh food e-commerce can hardly overcome. . Because of its short shelf life, easy wear and tear, perishable quality, food quality and safety, and many uncertain factors in the procurement process, fresh food has a strong impact on the supply of goods, quality and safety control, logistics and distribution capabilities, and after-sales service in the operation of e-commerce platforms. Put forward higher requirements. The most difficult thing for early fresh food e-commerce companies to overcome is the logistics. In particular, whether cold chain logistics can deliver products to consumers as quickly as possible is related to the most critical 'freshness' of fresh food, otherwise it will not be possible. Called fresh food e-commerce, it can be said that cold chain logistics is the basic hardware facility to maintain the quality and safety of fresh food. The control of logistics has even become the key to the success or failure of fresh food e-commerce companies. For this reason, there have been two models of Ali’s Cainiao plan and JD’s self-built logistics. With the continuous construction and improvement of cold chain logistics infrastructure, many logistics companies have also used their own logistics advantages to develop fresh food e-commerce. Now the real restriction on the development of fresh food e-commerce is no longer logistics, but the quality of food And safety. Quality and safety have become the bottleneck for the development of fresh food e-commerce. Even the two largest e-commerce platforms in China, Alibaba and JD.com, cannot escape accusations of fake goods and product quality and safety. The product quality and safety problems of other small and medium fresh food e-commerce companies are even more serious. Needless to say, once the quality and safety are not guaranteed, what is lost is the trust of consumers. Consumers will turn to offline supermarkets and vegetable markets to buy fresh vegetables and fruits, which will make consumers nurturing online Fresh food e-commerce companies in the habit of buying fresh food are at a disadvantage. Therefore, while the fresh food e-commerce entrepreneurial team continues to grow, due to the difficulty of guaranteeing the service system and quality and safety, many 'team members' quietly disappeared after experiencing a short period of glory. 3. Food traceability will break the crisis of fresh food e-commerce. The development of things is always moving forward in contradictions. The development of fresh food e-commerce faces quality and safety problems. This makes food quality and safety traceability the key to cracking the crisis of fresh food e-commerce. . In particular, consumers in the fresh food e-commerce market are more young people born in the 80s and 90s. They belong to the primitive tribal groups on the Internet. They are more accustomed to online shopping and pay more attention to the quality of life. Therefore, they are more concerned about the quality and quality of the products they buy. Safety is also more concerned.