WK5Audio - How e-commerce is impacting China's traditional marketplaces

According to the statistics of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the trading volumes of e-commerce has increased from 8.1 trillion to 26.1 trillion Yuan in the last five years. As an emerging field, the fresh food e-commerce has also developed really fast, a report from the China e-Business Research Centre pointed out that the sales amount of fresh food e-commerce has reached 85.14 billion Yuan in the first half of 2017.

But compared to the 4.7 trillion RMB trade volume of agriculture wholesale markets in 2016, the success of fresh food e-commerce does not seem that important. The report also showed that only 1% companies achieved profitability, 4% were in flat growth and 88% are in deficit and the rest 7% are in great deficit among over 4000 fresh food e-commerce companies.

The business of traditional vegetable markets still remains good. However, this traditional industry is impacted slightly from different aspects. On this track, different buyers and sellers shared their view points to make insight for audience about the relationship between fresh food e-commerce and traditional markets. For example, the vegetable seller of the community market on BFSU's western campus said that online seller could provide a cheaper price than sellers of traditional markets. This could be a great chanllenge for traditional markets.

As a widely anticipated field, although the fresh food e-commerce does not show a strong impact on the whole industry, but in the future the traditional vegetable market could be influenced more deeply.