For the past few years, the Chinese online market for fresh food has been growing rapidly and assets have accumulated one after another. All kinds of subsidies and sale promotions have also caused a fast increase in customer usage and customer loyalty. However, during the first half of this year, the shutdown of the company Mei wei qi qi (which operates under the banner of Amazon), the food contamination of Tablelife's products and the imminent bankruptcy of Ben xian sheng have triggered a heated debate about online food stores among the people.
Concerning the online food stores that have recently hit the wall, Mr Li Gang of the research center for market economy at Peking University has expressed that short harvesting times, bad locations, little storage space, inefficient distribution and several other factors have limited food production. He claims a large cooling system is needed when the food is transported. Such a system implies a large-scale investment and will eventually lead to higher costs for fresh food.
However, due to the fact that the online food market relies on production locations that are scattered all over the country, that the goods are easily damaged and that the degree of standardization is rather low, the costs of such a cooling system would also be huge. While being in these dire straits, the online platform for food stores is incredibly weak and even risks collapsing anytime soon, just as those companies before have done. Thus, a cooling system is the key to survival for online fresh food stores in the current highly competitive environment.