行动者网络视角下批发市场新电商模式

New models of E-commerce in wholesale market from the perspective of actor-network theory

在电商兴起和旧城更新的背景下,传统批发市场出现衰退趋势,亟需转型升级。本文在梳理广州市一德路海味干货市场转型历史的基础上,得出市场近年经历了由衰退到出现电商再到综合升级的初步判断,并构建了一德市场电商化的行动者网络模型探讨转型机制和效应。通过深入的现场调查,详尽分析人类行动者如商、客、政府和非人类行动者如海味干货商品、网络在电商化过程中的作用,得出具体的转型新模式。研究表明:(1)传统批发市场经过电商化转型,不会走向单一电商化或地理空间无用化的极端,而是出现综合多样的业态形式,如电商和实体、批发和零售4种类型的交叉组合;(2)在引发传统批发市场转型的多元行动者力量中,非人类主体如商品和网络发挥着巨大的作用,如商品的客观特性阻碍着地理空间的消除,而网络引发人们对空间重要性的重新权衡和促进对实物商品的升级改造。

Under the background of prosperous development of E-commerce and old city renewal, traditional wholesale markets are declining, and their transformation and upgrading are needed. In order to guide the upgrading of wholesale markets and old city space, this study took the Guangzhou Yide Seafood Market as an example to examine the mechanism and effects of its transformation. The author conducted an in-depth field research from November 2016 to March 2017 by methods of participatory observation, structured interview,snowball sampling, and questionnaire survey. Based on the history of the Yide Market from the Ming Dynasty,this article draws an preliminary conclusion that the market in recent years experienced a recessionary stage,followed by the emergence of E-commerce and comprehensive upgrading. The article then discusses the transformation mechanism and its effects by constructing an actor-network model of E-commercialization of the Yide Market. It analyzes the effects of human and non-human actors in the process of transformation by in-depth field investigation and shows that the Yide Market contains five kinds of actors—customers, the government,businesses, commodities, and network platform. In the stage of ＂problematization,＂ the non-human actors,networks, and seafood dry cargo commodity showed strong guiding power and control. Then the government mobilized other actors to participate in E-commerce in the stage of ＂enrolment and mobilization,＂ and businesses made different choices in the ＂interestement＂ stage. Next, role differentiations of businesses and customers became apparent, caused mainly by the actor network. Finally, the measures of self-guiding and selfmanagement by the chamber of commerce maintained the feasibility of E-commerce along with supervision by the government. Thus the alliance of interests of the actor network was finally built. The research found that after the E-commerce transformation, traditional wholesale market would not develop to the extremity of single Ecommercialization or geospatial invalidation, but form comprehensive and multiple commercial activity forms such as combinations of online and offline wholesale and retail, and that diverse powers of actors would lead the transformation of traditional wholesale markets. Non-human subjects such as products and the Internet are contributing great effects, for example, the objective characteristics of goods to be inspected hinders the elimination of geographical space, while the Internet causes people to reconsider the importance of space and upgrade the physical goods.