With its advantages such as large development scale, wide coverage, and active innovation and entrepreneurship, e-commerce has become an important tool to promote the continuous expansion of the consumer market. In the first quarter of this year, the national online retail sales reached 3624.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.9%. Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods was 299.48 billion yuan, an increase of 5.7% year-on-year, accounting for 24.0% of the total retail sales of consumer goods.

  With the development of e-commerce, the scale of consumer groups such as the post-00s, "silver-haired people", and rural groups has been growing, gradually breaking the restrictions of factors such as distance and region. Shopping scenarios are constantly innovating, combined with short videos, live broadcasts, instant delivery, etc., so that consumption potential can continue to be released. New employment forms continue to emerge, and the number of e-commerce employees continues to increase.

  However, the sustained and healthy development of the e-commerce industry also faces problems such as insufficient differentiated development of the platform, uneven sales product quality, and the need to further improve the refined operation capabilities. The "Special Action Plan to Boost Consumption" issued recently proposed to implement the digital consumption improvement action in depth and vigorously cultivate quality e-commerce. This will help improve the overall quality and competitiveness of the e-commerce industry, meet consumers' demand for high-quality goods and services, and help new consumption based on new technologies reach consumers faster.

  To vigorously cultivate quality e-commerce, we must strengthen policy support and guidance. Relevant departments can explore the introduction of relevant policies and measures in terms of strengthening business entities, innovating demonstration, transformation and empowering, factor allocation, and business environment to support the development of quality e-commerce. Improve the quality and service standards in the e-commerce field, and promote the establishment of a strict and complete quality control system for e-commerce platforms. Optimize supervision methods, make good use of digital technology to implement precise and intelligent supervision, trace the quality of products throughout the process, urge merchants to remove unqualified products, and improve the quality of e-commerce products from the source.

  Dig deep into application scenario innovation. E-commerce platforms are encouraged to increase investment in technical fields such as artificial intelligence, big data, Internet of Things, blockchain, etc. through independent research and development, cooperation with scientific research institutions, and improve operational efficiency; use VR/AR technology to improve the quality of intelligent recommendation and intelligent customer service, and arrange digital live broadcasts to provide consumers with immersive shopping experience. In rural e-commerce, live e-commerce and other fields, we will continuously improve the professionalism and comprehensive literacy of talents, and connect personalized consumption demand with high-quality product supply.

  Adhere to building a quality brand. Encourage e-commerce platforms to transform from price competition to differentiated development, cooperate with high-quality brand owners, and promote the deep integration of the real economy and e-commerce platforms. Strengthen the quality control of pre-sales, in-sales and after-sales services, improve systems such as quality standards, credit constraints, comprehensive governance, and consumer rights protection, and standardize the return and exchange process. Avoid excessive data collection and abuse, privacy information leakage and other problems, so that consumers can buy and be willing to buy quality goods with confidence. Standardize merchants’ competitive behavior, guide merchants to pay more attention to brand cultivation, and avoid falling into a vicious cycle of “price wars”. Promote e-commerce to give full play to its advantages of integrating online and offline and connecting the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to achieve sustainable and healthy development. (Xiang Sijia)

[Editor in charge: Ran Xiaoning]