發文數：353
發表時間：2004-09-14 22:16:00
發表時間：2004-09-14 22:16:00
University students give farmers a peach of a marketing channel
Publish Date:09/10/2004
Story Type:Panorama;
Byline:Chen Ting
When student Tseng Tai-yuan was asked by his professor to head up a project to sell peaches, Tseng was dubious. Not that he has anything against the sweet, juicy fruit, but the job entailed tackling a difficult online commercialization scheme while simultaneously helping to narrow the digital divide in Taiwan--a tall order for a student just short of graduation.
"At first, I was unsure whether or not I was up to the task, since I would be graduating in a few months," wrote Tseng, quickly adding that he was glad he finally decided to go ahead with the project. He described it as a challenge he would never forget.
Tseng and 11 fellow computer-savvy students in the Management Information Systems (MIS) department at Chung Yuan Christian University put their learning to good use when they started helping two indigenous villages in Taoyuan County sell their peach harvest over the Internet.
The two villages have the government-assigned, Mandarin Chinese names of Kuang Hua and Shin Shing, but the indigenous residents prefer to refer to their towns by their Atayal names, which are Hagawan, meaning "rest stop," and Galahe, or "a fine place." Indeed, most of the residents are members of the Atayal tribe, and in their remote mountain spot, they are left largely out of touch with the rest of the island. For this reason, the Internet has had a huge impact in these tiny towns.
"The Internet is truly incredible," enthused Hsiao Fu-yang, principal of Fuhsing Township’s Kuang Hua Elementary School, which serves both villages. "At first you cannot see any real effect, but then it just happened, like a miracle," he exclaimed.
The miracle Hsiao was referring to was the success of Tseng’s project. Thanks to the online presence supplied by Tseng and his team, peach sales hit a record high of nearly US$120,000 in a single four-month period, according to the China Times, a local Chinese-language newspaper. In a telephone interview, Tseng confirmed that amount, but said it only took two months, from late April to mid-July. Either way, an impressive feat for such remote mountain villages.
Hagawan and Galahe are located at altitudes of between 1,000 meters and 1,500 meters and can only be reached by a feeder line off the Northern Cross-island highway, which traverses the island’s mountainous central range to connect its east and west coasts.
The local peaches are grown on the mountainside of Mt. Lala, which is as famous for its breathtaking views as it is for its juicy fruit haul. The disadvantage of being so remote is that people from the rest of Taiwan rarely venture into the area to buy the famous shui mi tao, or "water honey peaches," as they are known locally.
Before setting up their online distribution channel, every year, at the peak of peach season and the advent of summer vacation, peach growers from the two villages would head into their orchards before dawn to pick the fruit and haul them over to the main highway. There they would set up stalls on the shoulder to sell their wares to passersby. The trip down the mountain takes between 30 minutes and three hours, depending upon which stretch of road a farmer has staked a claim on.
Despite all this effort, more than half of the peach harvest never made it to consumers, and the revenue generated by peach sales was far lower than that of Mt. Lala’s other, more accessible villages.
This difficult situation was immediately apparent to Hsiao when he became principal the year before last. He has 40 students attending his school, most of whose parents are peach farmers, and most of them make very little money. Hsiao began to think about how to expand the channels for selling peaches and reaching a wider customer base.
He contacted the Institute of Information Industry (III) and was put in touch with MIS professors Tsai Yi-chang and Liu Shi-hao. They had the idea of setting up a Web site to help market peaches from remote Hagawan and Galahe. In May, Liu took 11 students, including graduates Tseng and Liao Pei-yu, to the villages on a field trip to study the situation there and talk one-on-one with the peach farmers. The trip was far from an easy one.
"Standing in the pouring rain, I finally realized what they said about trucking down a full load of peaches only to meet with a downpour," wrote Liu on a discussion forum about his trip to Galahe. He explained that rain was the death knell for the day’s sales, since very few drivers were on the road, forcing them to carry the fragile fruits all the way back home. "Now I understand their feeling of loss," he wrote.
When they returned to campus, they set a sales target of about US$88,000 and began drawing up plans for the Web site. The professors left the project in the hands of the team of students, which Tseng was asked to lead. Liao took charge of customer relations. They began sending out e-mail advertisements, and before long the news spread by the online equivalent of word-of-mouth. Orders came piling in, and not only from the Hsinchu area. Customers from as far away as Penghu Island placed orders for peaches, which had to be flown in for delivery.
Today, the school gives classes in Web site management for children and their parents, and Hsiao is confident that they will be able to run their online peach businesses by themselves by the time of the next harvest. Farmers in the two Atayal villages have already set themselves the ambitious goal of doubling this year’s income. They stand a good chance of reaching this goal, since Web-based shopping has become one of the most popular online activities in Taiwan, at least according to the results of a study released Sept. 1 by the III’s Market Intelligence Center.
The "2004 Internet User Behavior Analysis" report is based on the results of an online poll of 5,017 Internet subscribers. It predicts that people in Taiwan will each spend an average of US$290 on goods and services purchased over the Internet this year, up from US$71 in 2001, it was reported in the local English newspaper the Taipei Times.
Already the business model is being copied, which is the surest sign of success in Taiwan. Administrators at nearby Balung Elementary School have contacted the MIS students and asked for tips on selling their village’s peaches.
Publish Date:09/10/2004
Story Type:Panorama;
Byline:Chen Ting
When student Tseng Tai-yuan was asked by his professor to head up a project to sell peaches, Tseng was dubious. Not that he has anything against the sweet, juicy fruit, but the job entailed tackling a difficult online commercialization scheme while simultaneously helping to narrow the digital divide in Taiwan--a tall order for a student just short of graduation.
"At first, I was unsure whether or not I was up to the task, since I would be graduating in a few months," wrote Tseng, quickly adding that he was glad he finally decided to go ahead with the project. He described it as a challenge he would never forget.
Tseng and 11 fellow computer-savvy students in the Management Information Systems (MIS) department at Chung Yuan Christian University put their learning to good use when they started helping two indigenous villages in Taoyuan County sell their peach harvest over the Internet.
The two villages have the government-assigned, Mandarin Chinese names of Kuang Hua and Shin Shing, but the indigenous residents prefer to refer to their towns by their Atayal names, which are Hagawan, meaning "rest stop," and Galahe, or "a fine place." Indeed, most of the residents are members of the Atayal tribe, and in their remote mountain spot, they are left largely out of touch with the rest of the island. For this reason, the Internet has had a huge impact in these tiny towns.
"The Internet is truly incredible," enthused Hsiao Fu-yang, principal of Fuhsing Township’s Kuang Hua Elementary School, which serves both villages. "At first you cannot see any real effect, but then it just happened, like a miracle," he exclaimed.
The miracle Hsiao was referring to was the success of Tseng’s project. Thanks to the online presence supplied by Tseng and his team, peach sales hit a record high of nearly US$120,000 in a single four-month period, according to the China Times, a local Chinese-language newspaper. In a telephone interview, Tseng confirmed that amount, but said it only took two months, from late April to mid-July. Either way, an impressive feat for such remote mountain villages.
Hagawan and Galahe are located at altitudes of between 1,000 meters and 1,500 meters and can only be reached by a feeder line off the Northern Cross-island highway, which traverses the island’s mountainous central range to connect its east and west coasts.
The local peaches are grown on the mountainside of Mt. Lala, which is as famous for its breathtaking views as it is for its juicy fruit haul. The disadvantage of being so remote is that people from the rest of Taiwan rarely venture into the area to buy the famous shui mi tao, or "water honey peaches," as they are known locally.
Before setting up their online distribution channel, every year, at the peak of peach season and the advent of summer vacation, peach growers from the two villages would head into their orchards before dawn to pick the fruit and haul them over to the main highway. There they would set up stalls on the shoulder to sell their wares to passersby. The trip down the mountain takes between 30 minutes and three hours, depending upon which stretch of road a farmer has staked a claim on.
Despite all this effort, more than half of the peach harvest never made it to consumers, and the revenue generated by peach sales was far lower than that of Mt. Lala’s other, more accessible villages.
This difficult situation was immediately apparent to Hsiao when he became principal the year before last. He has 40 students attending his school, most of whose parents are peach farmers, and most of them make very little money. Hsiao began to think about how to expand the channels for selling peaches and reaching a wider customer base.
He contacted the Institute of Information Industry (III) and was put in touch with MIS professors Tsai Yi-chang and Liu Shi-hao. They had the idea of setting up a Web site to help market peaches from remote Hagawan and Galahe. In May, Liu took 11 students, including graduates Tseng and Liao Pei-yu, to the villages on a field trip to study the situation there and talk one-on-one with the peach farmers. The trip was far from an easy one.
"Standing in the pouring rain, I finally realized what they said about trucking down a full load of peaches only to meet with a downpour," wrote Liu on a discussion forum about his trip to Galahe. He explained that rain was the death knell for the day’s sales, since very few drivers were on the road, forcing them to carry the fragile fruits all the way back home. "Now I understand their feeling of loss," he wrote.
When they returned to campus, they set a sales target of about US$88,000 and began drawing up plans for the Web site. The professors left the project in the hands of the team of students, which Tseng was asked to lead. Liao took charge of customer relations. They began sending out e-mail advertisements, and before long the news spread by the online equivalent of word-of-mouth. Orders came piling in, and not only from the Hsinchu area. Customers from as far away as Penghu Island placed orders for peaches, which had to be flown in for delivery.
Today, the school gives classes in Web site management for children and their parents, and Hsiao is confident that they will be able to run their online peach businesses by themselves by the time of the next harvest. Farmers in the two Atayal villages have already set themselves the ambitious goal of doubling this year’s income. They stand a good chance of reaching this goal, since Web-based shopping has become one of the most popular online activities in Taiwan, at least according to the results of a study released Sept. 1 by the III’s Market Intelligence Center.
The "2004 Internet User Behavior Analysis" report is based on the results of an online poll of 5,017 Internet subscribers. It predicts that people in Taiwan will each spend an average of US$290 on goods and services purchased over the Internet this year, up from US$71 in 2001, it was reported in the local English newspaper the Taipei Times.
Already the business model is being copied, which is the surest sign of success in Taiwan. Administrators at nearby Balung Elementary School have contacted the MIS students and asked for tips on selling their village’s peaches.
mo 於 2015-05-25 08:21:34 修改文章內容
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發文數：1發表時間:2026-02-09 15:48:19
發文數：353
發表時間：2004-09-15 03:31:00
發表時間：2004-09-15 03:31:00