The optimization of subjects’ interaction in the agricultural markets’ infrastructure in Ukraine with the use of e-commerce principles
The most important factor of the effective functioning of agricultural markets’ infrastructure is establishing a mechanism of interaction between the entities, market agents and end consumers. Moving products from producer to consumers and its redistribution is done due to the objects of physical and informational infrastructure. It creates two types of flows: material and concomitant (informational) ones. Nowadays, both flows of agricultural markets’ infrastructure of Ukraine are underdeveloped. Therefore, a number of issues on cooperation of agricultural producers, market agents and information centers take place that greatly affect the efficiency of product promotion, its price, safety and quality. To solve the abovementioned problems the information and communication technologies (E-commerce) is increasingly used in the global agriculture. E-commerce is business doing in the online-mode through direct sales of products and services, payment systems with the use of Internet Banking (Client-Bank), placing information and advertisements on the website and specialized web resources (business directories, advertising sites, electronic trading platforms). The primary advantage of using these instruments is interacting sellers and consumers in a virtual space in real time. Experience of foreign countries indicates that agriculture is receptive to E-commerce because the great and segmented nature of agricultural market. There are a lot of complications in constructing market strategy for producers of agricultural resources because they have to handle multiple client sectors: business structures (B2B - business to business); end consumers (B2C - business to consumer); state (B2G - business to government). Models of interaction of markets’ subjects of E-commerce generate overall marketing strategy, and also choose the type of web resources. The basis for the interaction of elements of E-commerce market is the availability of E-logistics infrastructure, which is a combination of commercial, financial and payments subsystems, which are based on the relevant network infrastructure, without which an electronic transaction could not be implemented. Advantages of use of the Internet are: 1. Internet as a channel of distribution and marketing communications allows consumers and producers to contact directly, without any intermediaries. The use of E-commerce business is the cause of a new type of intermediaries -informational agents. The main objectives of these intermediaries are searching information on customer requests and the construction of him with his potential partner. 2. Using the Internet contributes to the reduction of operating time on searching for necessary information on the proposal for the sale, purchase, trade counter proposals, the possibility of communication with potential customers, banking payments. 3. E-commerce improves the efficiency of exchange by reducing the transaction costs, increasing of competition, flexible pricing and a more transparent business. The benefits of e-commerce are expressed in cost savings (35%) on trade and procurement conducting of agricultural enterprises. 4. The use of electronic local charts generates an ability to measure the agricultural potential of the region. The optimization of agricultural markets’ infrastructure through the principles of E-commerce is so important nowadays due to increasing impact of global information and communication technology (the Internet) on socio-economic activities of society which contributes to a virtual global economic environment.