The E-Commerce Question Remains Largely Unanswered for Top U.S. Ag Retailers
November 10, 2020 Now that it’s mid-November, CropLife is busy putting its annual CropLife 100 survey findings to bed. For those interested in the results, be sure to check out both our website and magazine in early December.
For me, one interesting set of questions on this year’s survey had to do with e-commerce. Given that so many ag retailers have been talking about this topic for many years now, I would have expected the actual number of companies doing business this way to be pretty high among the nation’s top ag retailers. Yet, according to the 2020 CropLife 100, only 48% of respondents have such business models in place. This divides into three separate segments – those using home-grown systems (24%), those using white label/third party programs (20%), and users of auction-based services (4%). The rest, 52%, currently don’t offer e-commerce as part of their business operations.
I have to admit – these percentages kind of surprised me. I remember not too many years ago, virtually every company within the CropLife 100 seemed to be talking about e-commerce and its potential impact on traditional ag retailers. In fact, during the 2018 CropLife 100 survey, 14% of respondents said that the rise of e-commerce companies such as Farmers Business Network posed “a serious threat” to their future business prospects. Over the succeeding months, dozens of CropLife 100 ag retailers such as Effingham Equity and Asmus Farm Supply began experimenting (and adopting) e-commerce systems into their regular operations. Given this trend, I would have thought, two years later, the percentage of CropLife 100 companies using e-commerce would be at least more than half by now, if not two-thirds.
Loading ...However, there could be more e-commerce adoption on the horizon. When asked about the outlook for e-commerce business models for the upcoming 2021 season, 55% of 2020 CropLife 100 survey respondents said they expected usage in this area to increase in the new year. Still, 32% didn’t expect any such e-commerce uptick to occur. The remaining 13% weren’t certain which way the market would lean during 2021.
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