Factors Affecting Farmers’ use of E-Commerce in Agricultural Marketing
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Lin, Hsiu-Yi
Abstract
Since the Internet has become a modern-day necessity, all sorts of e-commerce, from cell phone computer to other vehicles, changes people''s way of life but also disrupts many traditional business channels. Agriculture industry is no exception. E-commerce platforms selling fresh produce are booming in recent years, transforming the traditional production and marketing channel in agriculture. In this context, this study aims to explore farmers’ strategies to form a portfolio of produce selling channels, on the premise of maximum expected profit; especially when the e-commerce platform for farmers appears, how it affects farmers’ portfolio is the main topic of this study. Looking through related domestic researches, we could discover that they mainly focus on the relationship between consumers and the e-commerce platform, few of them concentrating on the interaction between farmers and the e-commerce platform. However, this study suggests that the “productivity” of the e-commerce platform, its functionality to seek for diverse products and cooperation with farmers, is one of the key elements to gain business advantage. Therefore, this study combs through documents and market researches, from farmers’ point of view, tries to understand the e-commerce supply chain in depth, examines the relationship between farmers and the e-commerce platform, and finds out how to encourage farmers to make good use of it, in the hope that the study could provide feedback and advice for the e-commerce platform, making it more competitive while maintaining good relationship with produce suppliers. This research investigates case studies at home and abroad, analyzed successful business models of the e-commerce platform and also interviewed 158 active local farmers in person. The result shows that 50% of the interviewees sells produce online, among them over 80% chooses Facebook as the platform to interact with customers. By using Binary Logistic Regression, the study shows that farmers’ decision to make online sales is apparently affected by their education level, farmland’s location and cultivated area, and whether they have the certification. A farmer with higher education and produce certification, who lives in a remote farm with larger arable land, shows higher tendency to conduct online business. About 30% of the interviewees had cooperation with local e-commerce platforms, mainly because the latter approached the former, while farmers do want to increase their product visibility and marketing ability. The emerging of the e-commerce platform helps to raise farmers’ income indeed. However, farmers do raise three issues that damp their willingness to cooperate with the e-commerce platform: high logistics cost, lots of manpower needed for packaging on their own, and high commission demanded by the e-commerce platform.
Subjects
fresh food
E-Commerce
internet marketing of agricultural product
sales model
agricultural innovation
SDGs
Type
thesis
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