Photo by Maria Teneva Unsplash, this article is from WeChat public account: Fat Rabbit Finance (ID: pangtu2019) < / a> , author: Zhang is the
There are middlemen who make a difference. From an Internet company’s slogan, it has gradually become a buzzword.
It is impossible to see others making their own money. This popular slogan caters to such a strange and distorted psychology.
It doesn’t matter if other people talk about it, because it is marketing words and strategies.
But if you really believe in it and don’t want others to make a penny, then you may be the one who loses money if you look back.
The correct view of the three is to be pleased and happy when others make your money.
Of course, you are not a philanthropist giving money to others. It is when you need to spend money on better products and services, saving yourself costs and time.
This is the true sustainable business logic.
E-commerce help farmers, but buyers want to fight for character?
If it was in the past, spring is a hot season for all kinds of fruits and vegetables, but this year, affected by the epidemic, many farmers in the country are in trouble.
Pineapples, oranges, and apples. The various fruits endorsed by the “slow-selling uncle” that were once synthesized by extensive P-pictures, this time may be really slow-selling.
Although the epidemic has not been completely resolved, consumer demand for fruit has been there.
Facing this situation, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have launched measures to help farmers with agriculture, directly extending their help to the fields, and helping farmers to “sell” unsalable agricultural products directly. It is then delivered to consumers.
This model can be said to take advantage of the convenience of the network and bypass the “middlemen” to directly solve the problem of information asymmetry between the source of agricultural products and the consumer terminal.
This seems to be a very good measure to help farmers, and it also prevents middlemen from earning the difference, but the problem follows.
Netizens posted an article, “When it comes to helping farmers, I don’t believe anyone is worse than me”, and received more than 40 blackened and rotten strawberries. I bought another strawberry, which looks good, but I bought 3 pounds, and actually received less than 2 pounds.
Other netizens have also posted the mines they stepped on when buying fruits for farming, and you can see that there are not a few who are disappointing. Some netizens ridicule that “buying farmer’s products is fighting for character.”
Intermediaries are specialized divisions of labor
Why is this happening? Why do we have the advantages of network informatization and solve the problem of asymmetric information, but still many unexpected situations appear?
The reason is actually very simple. The middleman is a specialized division of labor. It is not as simple as making a difference.
The fruit farmers who are responsible for planting and picking are very experienced in planting techniques, and the consumers who are “eating” are very particular about choosing fruits.
When choosing fruits, consumers will have a variety of different levels of needs, such as the type, taste, price, and packaging of the fruit, whether to eat it or give it away, eat it immediately or keep it there again and again. Eat and wait.
So the fruit farms we see offline, or those fruit agricultural products that we see in supermarkets, are “screened products” that have been screened, with screening rates ranging from 10% to 50%.
And we see that those backlogs of fruit are all “common goods.” The so-called “common goods” refers to goods sold at a uniform price regardless of quality, specifications and grades.
Of course, the farmers who are busy in the fields know that fruits are graded, but they are originally graded and sold to intermediate wholesalers. They will give different prices according to different grades.
Now farmers directly connect with consumers. On the one hand, they do n’t know the level of specific needs of consumers. On the other hand, it is estimated that they have never had a lot of experience in handling scattered orders.
In addition, the prices are all uniform low prices, and there is no incentive to do careful tiered retail.
So if we buy agricultural fruit at a low price, basically we will send those “uniform goods” that have not been graded.
And if it is a distributor’s purchase, many of these non-conforming products will be thrown away or entered the cannery.
The usual distributors and wholesalers seem to be middlemen who make a difference. But they searched for the supply resources of farmers and purchased them by grade; the other hand needed to find shipping channels to find the corresponding customers for the corresponding grades of products.
Not to mention that fruits, which are easily damaged and spoiled, need more professionalism in logistics and transportation, and also need large-scale centralized transportation to amortize costs.
So, it seems that the information is only asymmetric between buying and selling, farmers and “food”. In fact, it is far more than that. It is far from simple.
There is cooperation in division of labor and specialization in surgery. This is the meaning and value of the existence of middlemen.
In the end, it ’s consumers who actually benefit
Many people don’t like middlemen. They think that middlemen make a “spread” that should not be earned and can be saved. This is actually a misunderstanding.
In fact, the more our economy develops and the more our society progresses, the more middlemen we need, not the less.
If you want to eat, we can use various APPs to read reviews, place orders or call for takeaway, middlemen.
If you want to stay, you can also use various APPs and middlemen.
You want to rent, buy or sell a house. We need intermediaries to help run errands and middlemen.
You need to decorate the house. In fact, the decoration company is an intermediary, plus a little brand and credibility endorsement, middlemen.
You have to learn, Luo Zhenyu, middlemen; you have to know about finance and economics, Kung Fu finance, middlemen.
These are actually middlemen, all earning asymmetric information.
The difference they make is consistent with the internal logic of fruit spreads.
But they are not hindering the transmission of information. They are not simply using information asymmetry to make money.
On the contrary, they are professionals in information processing. By categorizing information, they speed up the speed and quality of information transmission, help us to screen and match information, and effectively save costs and time for all parties.
So, as long as it is not a liar, a qualified middleman earns a price difference and is justified.
Today, as the market division of labor becomes more and more detailed, there will be more and more middlemen.
Allowing middlemen to earn the difference and give middlemen the opportunity is in fact giving themselves the opportunity. The ultimate benefit is ourselves.
As for the fruit, it can be simply summarized that the high price is good quality, don’t be unhappy with cheap and cheap, and feel unhappy.
This article is from WeChat public account: Fat Rabbit Finance (ID: pangtu2019) , Author: Zhang is the