Chinese Consumers Buying Food Online

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

The ag industry has always excelled at meeting consumer demands efficiently and economically. Changing consumer preferences and behavior will continue to change how agriculture meets those demands. Certainly a rising tide of demand in recent decades has been coming from China, and technology is changing the way many Chinese consumers make food decisions. Here’s Xin Yi Lim from Chinese agricultural e-commerce company Pinduoduo.

Lim… “For a lot of people, what you actually want to buy for things like say food or fresh produce, it can be influenced by those around you. Nobody wakes up and says, I have to buy a bunch of bananas like today. Like you don't necessarily, you know, have to buy the bananas. If somebody comes up to you and says Hey, my neighbor down the street is also in on this deal. Do you want in? We can buy peaches together for like 30% off the market rate. And so your demand for bananas, on that day, just got shifted into demand for peaches. And so that means that the peach merchant basically just got a bunch of orders coming in in a short period of time. And what that does, especially for agricultural products, is that it gives the merchants a lot morevisibility.”

The company facilitates this team buying and even has games where customers can win agricultural produce.