Innovative Electronic Commerce Model of Fresh Products

Compare to industrial agriculture, local agriculture is not only more sustainable for the environment but also can improve the profit of small farmers, instead of letting the money earned by agriculture enterprises. The products of local agriculture are healthier and tasty to human and its will bring business to the local country. In Taiwan''s traditional fresh products industry, producers and consumers are located in the southern and northern regions so it’s a long way to transport fresh products. There are some companies who do the purchase and shipment business, we call them middleman. On the way of shipment, in addition of shipping fee costs, because fresh products are easier to rot, another cost is damage cost. Therefore, middleman should consider these two costs when they purchase fresh products. Because of these two costs, the purchase price is very low, so only industrial agriculture can meet the condition of economic scale. For local agriculture, the amount of product is relatively much lower than industrial agriculture, so it can’t meet the condition of economic scale, therefore, the farmers of local agriculture should find another way to sell their products. Recently, there are many new e-commerce companies who sell fresh products. Compare to traditional fresh products industry, these companies let consumers easily connect with producers by internet so they don’t need middleman to deal with the transaction. Therefore, the profits which originally earned by middleman can transfer to producers. But for consumers, they need to make order early and will receive shipments after many days. Compare to traditional purchasing process, consumers need to wait for a long time, this kind of process is not consistent with consumer behavior. In order to fulfill the unmet needs of consumers and small size farm, this paper develops a new business model to help small size farm to sell their products, consumers to buy healthy and tasty food materials and change the structure of fresh products industry.