Research On Online And Offline Competition And Integration Of Fresh Products

China’s traditional e-commerce is booming,with online retail market penetration as high as 34.3%.In the fresh product market,with the continuous entry of fresh food e-commerce,a situation of competition and coexistence of various formats such as agricultural market,supermarkets,fresh food e-commerce and community fresh food stores has formed.But agricultural market always occupies half of the market,the market share of fresh food e-commerce is less than 8%,and less than 1% has achieved profitability.Daily Youxian,which pioneered the front warehouse model,have a net loss of3.849 billion yuan in 2022.Fresh food e-commerce companies have not yet reversed the overall loss situation.Fresh food online channels need to solve the problem of profitability,and offline channels need to adapt to the development of the platform economy.Fresh food e-commerce and agricultural market are moving from online and offline competition to their respective online and offline integration.Aiming at the status quo of online and offline competition and integration of fresh products,this thesis starts from practice to theoretical analysis.Based on the classic Salop model,the competition framework of online channels(fresh food e-commerce)and offline channels(agricultural market)is constructed.It further discusses the changes in the competitive equilibrium in the presence of reserved prices,cost variance,and network externalities;and then from the perspective of practice,taking Dingdong Maicai,Tiantian Orchard,and multiple agricultural markets as examples to analyze online and offline competition and integration.The research conclusions are as follows:(1)Compared with the agricultural products market,fresh food e-commerce companies have a high fixed cost investment,which makes them have obvious disadvantages in the competition in the fresh food market.The fixed cost investment pushes up the pricing of fresh food e-commerce companies and weakens their competitiveness;secondly,the higher fixed costs,the higher the barriers to the fresh food e-commerce industry,and the fewer the number of companies surviving.Moreover,the consumer’s reserved price will affect the pricing decision in the fresh food market.When the reserved price is low,fresh food e-commerce companies may not be able to survive in the market due to high fixed costs.(2)The profit maximization problem of fresh food e-commerce in the circular model is irrelevant to its own location decision.This is caused by the symmetry of the manufacturers on the left and right sides of the enterprise in the circular market.The relative profit maximization goal can be used to solve the exogenous problem of location selection.In addition,the results of the cost variance model show that fresh food e-commerce companies with cost advantages tend to set lower prices.(3)Network externalities will affect the pricing strategy of fresh food e-commerce.Under positive network externalities,fresh food e-commerce has lower prices and a larger market share,so the market concentration will increase.In addition,network externalities affect consumer utility evaluation through the two mechanisms of increasing product diversity and reducing logistics costs,and then affect the competitive equilibrium state of the fresh food market.(4)Compared with other commodity markets,fresh food e-commerce has no obvious price advantage;compared with traditional e-commerce and agricultural market,due to factors such as cost and timeliness of fresh food,it is difficult to achieve the market share of traditional e-commerce in the competition.The model and case analysis show that the online and offline channels of the fresh food market are constantly extending to each other.The development of the online channel of the agricultural market and the extension of the offline channel of the fresh food e-commerce all prove that the competition in the fresh food market will eventually go to fusion.This thesis constructs an online and offline competition model of the fresh food market,and discusses the influence of reserve prices,cost variance,and network externalities on the competitive equilibrium from both theoretical and practical levels,and explains the phenomenon of head agglomeration in the fresh food e-commerce industry.It enriches the relevant research on fresh market competition,and leads to the trend of competition—convergence.Based on the research conclusions,in order to improve the efficiency of fresh product circulation and better promote the high-quality development of the fresh food industry,this thesis puts forward targeted strategies from the aspects of accelerating the sales reform of the agricultural market,creating a sharing mechanism for cold chain logistics,and strengthening cooperation of the fresh food supply chain.