Nokia Siemens Networks and China Mobile Group Fujian (Fujian Mobile) have teamed up to provide an eCommerce platform that promises an important link between rural consumers and urban businesses.

The solution allows affordable access to a wide range of consumer products to villagers in Fujian province, while opening up a vast market to urban retailers and product distributors. The eCommerce solution is an integrated end-to-end service, which contains an online Catalogue Sales Platform (CSP), on which urban businesses can upload their products for marketing to rural customers. The service is delivered to villagers through local entrepreneurs, who provide shared internet access to the online shopping platform tailored to the rural environment.

The online shopping model challenges traditional ways of conducting business and purchasing goods in remote locations - villagers gain access to a wider selection of reliable consumer products, and urban suppliers are provided with a new sales channel reaching the mass market in villages. Nokia Siemens Networks is currently running a pilot in partnership with Fujian Mobile.

Small and medium-sized retailers and distributors, in particular, can improve their business efficiency, and offer a wider product range.

In addition, the service gives the operator the opportunity explore a potentially powerful new business model of Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C) services that helps them to improve local presence in rural areas.

The business model has been successfully piloted over five months at two counties in Fujian province of southeast China in partnership with Fujian Mobile and local retail suppliers. Nokia Siemens Networks has collaborated closely with Fujian Mobile and provided extensive consulting services in identifying this new opportunity.

“The eCommerce solution enables a win-situation for all players in the value chain – rural consumers can easily access a wider range of reliable and quality consumer products at better price, local shop owners can overcome the traditional entry barriers to expand their own business scope, and retail suppliers can expand their rural market channel at minimum costs”, said Josef Lorenz, Head of Innovations, Nokia Siemens Networks.