The spatial linkage of Taobao Villages in Haining City based on the operation process

As an industrial phenomenon with rich Chinese characteristics, Taobao Villages have formed a complete industrial chain from production to sale and core goods to supporting industries, bringing extensive spatial linkage and profound influence. Through questionnaire surveys and interviews, the paper obtained first-hand data on Taobao Village stores in Haining City and explored the spatial linkage characteristics of Taobao Village’s industrial chain from the operation process perspective. The results revealed that the operation process of online stores can be divided into four core parts: research & development or sampling, production or purchasing, online sale, and delivery. The main operation parts of self-production and sales stores and local-dependent online market-oriented stores were in Haining City, forming close industrial linkages, whereas for nonlocal-dependent online market-oriented stores, only a few parts of the operation process were in Haining. Accordingly, Taobao Villages and Haining City undertook all parts of the operation, becoming a complex space and also the main area realizing a strong spatial linkage among Taobao Villages. The area outside Jiaxing City is mainly a sales market (Hangzhou City provides a sales platform), and their connection with Taobao Village relies primarily on the Internet. To form a more extensive spatial linkage and play a leading role, Haining City should encourage the self-production and sales stores and local-dependent online market-oriented stores to create a locally-rooted production system or industrial cluster.


Introduction
In recent years, Taobao Villages and Taobao Towns have mushroomed nationwide.According to a series of China Taobao Villages Reports issued by AliResearch, since 2014, Taobao Villages have been booming (Fig. 1); Taobao Villages and Taobao Towns have gradually covered 70% of provinces in China.Against the background of "Internet + ", rural e-commerce, with villages as the physical spatial carrier, has formed a networked virtual spatial structure, posing a profound influence on the traditional rural morphological pattern, contact mode, production mode, and lifestyle.The Internet platform provides new sales channels, stimulating the vitality of commerce and the employment of rural laborers.Relying on the platform, rural people can start businesses, attract rural laborers to return to their hometowns, and create enormous economic value and jobs.It is helpful to the development and transformation of local industries.Moreover, with the development of Taobao Villages, the environmental governance and service facility construction in the rural area have been taken into account, which accelerates the construction of rural infrastructure and improves the environmental quality of the rural area.
As the spatial carrier of a new economic and industrial model, Taobao Villages have received wide scholarly attention and have been studied intensely in multiple fields.The prior studies mainly probed into the following dimensions: (1) the first dimension is the spatial distribution of Taobao Villages from a macro view, including the distribution characteristics at national, provincial, and city levels (Zhu et al., 2016).In general, Taobao Villages are gathered with unbalanced distribution at national, regional, provincial, city, and town levels.At the national and regional levels, 17 provinces have Taobao Villages, most of which are in the east region (Bai & Sun, 2019).The regions with dense Taobao Villages contain the north of Jiangsu, the south of Shandong, the middle and south of Hebei in North China, the whole province of Zhejiang and the south of Jiangsu in Middle China, as well as the Pearl River Delta, Chaoshan, and the southeast of Fujian in South China (Shan & Luo, 2017).At the regional level, Cao et al.(2019) believed that Taobao Villages in the Yangtze River Delta have formed a significant clustering trend in 3 sectors and showed a "dual-edge" characteristic in the central urban area.At the metropolitan area level, most Taobao Villages in Guangzhou are concentrated around the central urban area and in the area with medium and low densities of permanent residents and employed population.Those villages operating similar products are gathered (Hu & Liu, 2016).At the county level, an important characteristic is that the Taobao Village is formed by centering on a key industry; for instance, the Taobao Villages in Qinghe County of Hebei Province centers on the cashmere industry (Ren et al., 2019).Meanwhile, studies also discovered the vanishing of some Taobao Villages (Fu et al., 2019).( 2) the second dimension is the development stages, industrial transition, and motivational mechanism of Taobao Villages from a micro view (Wang, 2015;Cui et al., 2014;Liang et al., 2016;Luo, 2013;Liu et al., 2015).Taking Dongfeng Village and Junpu Village as examples, Zeng got the formation of Taobao Villages divided into the initial stage and the improvement stage (Zeng et al., 2015).The villages were initialized with pure spontaneous support of the folks in the initial stage and were intervened in improving various services by the government in the improvement stage.The formation process could be divided into five parts: introducing a project, elementary diffusion, accelerated diffusion, cooperation, and longitudinal clustering (Zeng et al., 2015).From the perspective of flowing space, Wang explored the spatial values and mechanisms of the role of people in the evolution of space evolution in the information age (Wang, 2017).Zhang analyzed the evolution of Taobao Village taking Lirendong Village in Guangzhou as an example and proposed an applicable spatial optimizing Fig. 1 The distribution of Taobao Villages in Haining.Source: Author's self-drawing strategy (Zhang et al., 2018).(3) the third dimension is the impact of e-commerce on rural development from a micro view.Taobao Villages, a new pattern in the current rural development transformation of China, were affecting and reshaping many traditional villages (Chen & Zhang, 2018).The impacts of Taobao villages on rural development were manifested in many aspects, such as the social structure and space, which could promote the correlation diversification and non-correlation diversification of the rural economy to some extent (Zhang & Wang, 2020a, 2020b).Luo rose three features of the urbanization of rural areas driven by Taobao Villages, namely the transition to non-agricultural employment, the all-around modernized lifestyle, and the intensive urbanized space (Luo et al., 2019).However, e-commerce also has a negative impact while bringing a positive impact.Through a questionnaire survey, Zhang and Wang analyzed and concluded that the Taobao Villages with significant positive impacts and negative impacts were primarily in Taizhou City, Hangjiahu Area, and Yiwu City (Zhang & Wang, 2020a, 2020b).( 4) the fourth dimension is the spatial linkage of Taobao Villages from the perspective of the industrial chain.Taking Qingyanliu Village in Yiwu City as an example, Qian & Zhang analyzed the spatial location of the manufacturer, supply center, seller, and associated services, and their impacts on the logistics, living environment, and employment (Qian & Zheng, 2013).
Overall, most existing studies on Taobao Villages were made from a macro perspective or take Taobao Villages as a whole.The contents of existing studies focused on the spatial distribution of Taobao Villages, or the development stages, industrial transition, and social and spatial impacts of Taobao Villages, lacking a micro view of stores in the Taobao Village.As its name implies, Taobao Village is formed by the development and clustering of one and another Taobao stores.The traditional villages have a simple economy and short external linkages.Differently, due to the operation process of Taobao stores (including the design and production, purchasing, and associated services such as photographing and picture beautification, online sale, delivery, and other parts), Taobao Villages have complex and multi-distance linkages with the external spaces.Based on these linkages, Taobao Villages are rooted locally and forms industrial chains or industrial clusters.Besides, Taobao Villages are also connected with the wide world, so the sales volume and revenue are increased (Zhang & Wang, 2020a, 2020b).The existing studies took Taobao Villages as a whole in surveying the spatial relations between different parts of an industrial chain.To supplement, a study on the spatial linkage of Taobao Village could be made based on the operation process from the micro view of stores to clarify the spatial linkage's content involving the short-distance local linkage and the long-distance virtual linkage.This study conducted a questionnaire survey and interviews to probe into 12 Taobao Villages in the Haining City of Zhejiang Province.Further, the spatial parts and linkage features of e-commerce transactions were studied based on the operation process of the Taobao stores, which is significant for disclosing the spatial relation in the industrial chain of Taobao Village.

Research object
Haining City is located in the north of Zhejiang Province, 100 km from Shanghai in the east, and borders Hangzhou in the west and Qiantang River in the south.
Up to 2016, there were 12 Taobao Villages in Haining City.At the very beginning ( 2014), the Taobao Villages were scattered, which then had begun to orient to specialized markets or gather in the urban area and were going to form a "Taobao Town" over two years of development.In general, Taobao villages are nearby external traffic trunk roads and industrial parks in the region.It is representative to select this city as the study object for the following reasons.First, there are many Taobao Villages in Haining City.Among the prefecture cities, the number of Taobao Villages in Jiaxing City ranks top ten all over China, almost half of which are in Haining City.Second, many types of Taobao Villages show the early form of "one type in one village" or "one type in one town".Depending on the famous Haining China Leather City, Taobao stores in the city have various products, including underwear, socks, rubber products, and leather products.In terms of product sources, the products are either produced by the sellers or produced locally or sold on commission online.

Research strategy
The operation process refers to a series of operation parts of a Taobao store, such as research and development (R&D) or sampling, production, purchasing, photographing, picture beautification, uploading, advertising, sale, and delivery (Fig. 2).According to the interviews with the Taobao stores, the operation process can be divided into four core parts: R&D or sampling, production or purchasing, online sale, and delivery.The stores include self-production and sales stores and online market-oriented stores.The former stores have actual offline stores for production and online stores for selling the products.The latter stores mainly sell products online without practical production.The two types have different operation processes and spatial linkages.
From the perspective of stores, the spatial linkages of a Taobao Village (formed by the clustering of the stores) include the external spatial linkage of each store and that of the Taobao Village.The analysis result of these spatial linkages can be a basis for the Taobao Village to construct a healthy ecologic industrial chain and optimize the regional economic activities.
1) The external spatial linkage of a single store.Based on an analysis of the space types for the core operation parts of a single store and a summarization of the store's operational organization model, the spatial linkage levels were divided into the village, local town, county, prefecture city, and higher levels.
2) The overlayed external spatial linkages of all the stores in the Taobao Village.In this regard, the whole operation process of the Taobao Village was analyzed, including the function at each level of space, and the linkage intensity between the spaces.

Data acquisition
The information about Taobao Villages in Haining City and the Taobao stores was acquired by questionnaire and interview.The Taobao storekeepers were surveyed using a questionnaire with closed and semi-open questions to know their stores' operation processes, locations, and operation costs.Further, the responsible persons of the village committee and town were interviewed to collect data about the Taobao Villages, such as the population engaging in e-commerce, the economy, and the changes caused by the e-commerce development.
3 The spatial linkage and classification of the stores based on the operation processes

The spatial linkage of a single store based on the operation process
The spatial linkage of each online store was analyzed based on the store's operation process acquired from the in-deep interview.Taking an online store in Xianfeng Village, Maqiao Street as an example, the operation parts of the store and the corresponding operation places are listed (Table 1).According to the above classification of the operation process, the operation process of this store has no R&D or sampling; the goods are selected and sourced from Haining China Leather City; online sale includes photographing and picture beautification in the city and uploading the product pictures, advertising and placing orders at home; the delivery includes packing for delivery and picking up by deliveryman.The spaces for the above parts of the operation are visualized and exhibited (Fig. 3), showing the main spatial linkages of this online store in Haining City.Seeking models and sources of goods, photographing, and picture beautification are conducted in the central urban area of Haining.By contrast, loading, advertising, and packing for delivery and picking up by deliveryman are done in Xianfeng Village.This case demonstrates that most spatial linkages based on the store's operation process are in the city or county, especially in the local village.Hence, it is necessary to

The spatial linkage feature of stores based on the operation process
According to the above methods, the operation parts of each interviewed rural online store and the corresponding spatial linkages were visualized.The stores were divided into self-production and sales stores, and online market-oriented stores.The two types have different spatial linkages.

The spatial linkage feature of online market-oriented stores
The online market-oriented store does not produce but gets goods from other places and then sells them online.Its spatial linkage feature is highly relevant to the origin of the goods.According to the origin of the goods, online market-oriented stores were divided into local-dependent stores and nonlocal-dependent stores by spatial linkage.
1) The spatial linkage feature of local-dependent stores.Such stores take goods in Haining City and sell them online.The production, online sale, and logistics  transfer are mainly in the city, forming close industrial chains.Its spatial linkages are mainly distributed in the local area and have strong regional dependence on the city.Hence, the production and sales networks are stable so that a locally-rooted production system or industrial cluster can be formed (Fig. 4).
2) The spatial linkage feature of nonlocal-dependent stores.Such stores get goods from places other than Haining City and sell them online.The production is not in Haining.Even the logistics transfer, photographing, and picture beautification are also not conducted in Haining.Such stores are less dependent on the city and are also prone to the impact of the market (Fig. 5).

The spatial linkage feature of self-production and sales stores
Self-production and sales online store produces goods in their real offline space and sells them online.As known by the interviews, most of these stores sell goods both online and offline and have a stable sales network.Regarding the spatial linkage of such stores, the R&D or sampling is in Haining City or Hangzhou City; the production is in Haining; the sale and logistics transfer is also in Haining.In other words, the spaces involved in the operation parts of such stores are mostly in Haining and their spatial linkages are also mainly localized in Hanning.Such stores are highly dependent on the city and have formed or are easy to form a locally-rooted production system or industrial cluster (Fig. 6).
4 The spatial linkage feature of taobao village based on the operation process

Functional analysis of the spaces
By overlaying the functions of the spaces involved in the operation process of the interviewed stores, the In the figure, the color represents the specific part of the operation undertaken by the place and the sector presents the proportion of the specific operation part in the functions of the place.Therefore, the functions of each spatial level in the operation process of Taobao Village could be analyzed.To express the spatial linkage feature of the Taobao Village clearly, the spatial area was divided into different levels, including the local village (Taobao Village), the local town, Haining City, Jiaxing City, other places than Jiaxing City, and Hangzhou City.
1) The local village (Taobao Village).It is an administrative village where rural e-commerce resides.This village is a comprehensive functional area that undertakes the functions of R&D or sampling, production or purchasing, online sale, and delivery, covering all parts of a Taobao store's operation process.Most industrial products of the Taobao Village are rooted in the local industrial cluster and have a cost advantage (Bai & Sun, 2019).With different types of local industries, the phenomenon of "one type in one village" or "one type in one town" appears in the Taobao Villages of Haining City.For instance, the Tanqiao Village in Yuanhua Town mainly sells socks and gloves; the Xianfeng Village and Baishi Village in Maqiao Street mainly sell woven base materials and leather base materials; the Laozhuang Village and Yancang Village in Chang'an Town, as well as the Yongfu Village, Xuxiang Village, and Qianjin Village in Xucun Town, primarily sell curtains and home textiles; the Taobao Villages in Xieqiao Town and Yan'guan Town mainly sell leather and fur clothing.Hence, the products are diverse (Zhang & Wang, 2020a, 2020b).2) The local town.This town mainly assumes the functions of production or purchasing and delivery.Delivery is conducted primarily in the market town, while the production or purchasing mainly occurs in other villages of the town.Namely, the surrounding area of the Taobao Village mainly produces goods, while the adjacent market town is for delivery.3) Haining City.Relying on comprehensive public services, the central urban area undertakes the functions of production or purchasing, online sale, and delivery.There are three reasons: first, many online stores seek supply of goods here, especially in Haining China Leather City; second, the photographing and picture beautification need to be completed in the central urban area; third, the logistics transfer station is in Haining, so it is convenient to deliver goods from Haining.4) Jiaxing City.The functions of its central urban area also include production or purchasing, online sale, and delivery, which are similar to Haining City but weaker than the latter.Other counties of Jiaxing City also supply goods by producing or purchasing.5) Place other than Jiaxing City.Places other than Jiaxing City are mainly the goods' sales destinations, playing the roles of online sale and delivery.6) Hangzhou City.Most online stores are registered on Taobao or Tmall and the network platform is provided in the central area of the city.
Fig. 8 The linkage intensities of the spatial levels.Source: Author's self-drawing

The linkage intensity between Taobao Village and the external spaces
The spatial linkage map (Fig. 8) of Taobao Villages based on the operation process was obtained after overlaying the spatial linkages of the interviewed stores' operation processes.In the figure, the physical linkage refers to the other functional linkage between two places than goods or online ordering; the virtual linkage refers to the online communication or ordering linkage between two places.In terms of the intensity of the functional linkage, the external spaces having strong linkages with the Taobao Village are mainly the local town, downtown Haining, Hangzhou, and other cities of China.For the Taobao Village, the delivery is mainly conducted in the market town; the production or purchasing, online sale, and logistics delivery are mainly carried out in the central urban area of Haining; the central urban area of Hangzhou provides the online sales platform; other cities of China are the sales destinations.By administrative division, Haining City is a part of Jiaxing City.However, the Taobao Village has not had a strong linkage with the central urban area of Jiaxing City, because few parts of the former's operation process involve the latter; its production or purchasing and delivery are mainly linked to Hangzhou and other cities in the province and even the cities in other provinces.
Further, functional linkage is divided into physical linkage and virtual linkage.The physical linkage represents the actual functional linkage between two places.It is a multi-zonal collaborative linkage.The places with strong physical linkage to the Taobao Village are the market town and the central urban area of Haining City.The linkage intensity decreases with the increase in the spatial distance (Fig. 9).This means that the locally-rooted industrial clusters at the town and city levels can be formed around the Taobao Village, which is beneficial to the development of the Taobao Village and the city.Hence, the government should attach importance to the functional complexity when the Taobao Village provides public goods subsequently to enhance fostering localdependent stores.The virtual linkage represents the village's direct linkage with the external spaces through online communication or ordering.In this linkage, the Taobao Village is led in a flowing space to obtain extensive attention and markets.The strong virtual linkages with Haining City mainly appear in the central urban area of Hangzhou City (the sales platform), and other cities of China (the target market) (Fig. 10).This implies that attention should be paid to the marketing of the Taobao Village to create and maintain the village "popular" and visible.

Conclusion
The booming of Taobao Villages and Taobao Towns nationwide has caused a significant upsurge in relevant studies.In this study, a questionnaire survey and interviews were made to acquire primary data on Taobao Villages in Haining City; based on this data, the spatial linkages in the industrial chain of Taobao Villages were studied based on the operation processes.The study's results prove that the operation process of a Taobao store could be divided into four parts: R&D or sampling, production or purchasing, online sale, and delivery.The main operation parts of the self-production and sales store or local-dependent online market-oriented stores are mainly carried out in the city, forming a close industrial chain with a stable production and sales network.Hence, a locally-rooted production system or industrial cluster can be formed in the city.For nonlocal-dependent online market-oriented stores, goods are purchased Fig. 9 The physical linkage of Taobao Villages in Haining.Source: Author's self-drawing from places other than Haining City; only a few parts of the operation such as the online sale or delivery are conducted in the city.Thereby, such stores are less dependent on the region and prone to the impact of the market.The spaces at different levels assume different functions.Taobao Village, the local town, and Haining City form a complex space that undertakes all the aforesaid operation parts and are the main spaces with physical linkages.The area beyond Jiaxing City is primarily the sales market and has a virtual spatial linkage with Taobao Villages.
Currently, how to further improve the Taobao Village is an inevitable problem for Taobao Villages and the local government.With the development of e-commerce, the internal Taobao Villages often cope with many issues regarding space utilization and public goods supply, such as insufficient storage space, constrained space, and a bad living environment; many stores outside the village are confronted with fierce competition and high flow costs.The local government should strengthen the construction of transportation, network, and other infrastructures, and make scientific guidance and rational planning to improve the supply level of public goods so that more physical linkages are established in the urban area and Taobao Villages of Haining City.By gathering the existing industries or creative industries in the local area, the government can create locally-rooted industrial clusters and realize "one type in one village" or "one type in one town".In the meantime, it is also needed to intensify the marketing of Taobao Villages and highlight their competitive advantages.

Fig. 2
Fig.2The operation process of online store.Source: Author's self-drawing

Fig. 3
Fig. 3 The spatial linkage of an online store in Xianfeng Village, Maqiao Street.Source: Author's self-drawing

Fig. 4
Fig. 4 Spatial linkage of local-dependent online market-oriented stores.Source: Author's self-drawing

Fig. 6
Fig. 6 spatial linkage of self-production and sales online stores.Source: Author's self-drawing

Table 1
The operation parts of an online store in Xianfeng Village and the corresponding operation places