<aside> 💡 Introduction

Most senior people in China don’t use online shopping tools. However, due to the inconvenience of shopping offline, China's quickly aging population, and the still existing pandemic situation, the capability to shop online to get products and services in time grows increasingly important for seniors. The team decided to research for an effective solution to empower them to shop online.

Our researches include 4 approaches:

1. Literature analyses for senior people support and online shopping;
2. Online shopping product analyses: competition landscape, product features, elements that work or do not work;
3. Online questionnaire and offline focus group discussions for both the elderly and their children (caregivers);
4. Product innovation concept test and prototype field test.

The key findings are:

1. Currently seniors don’t use online shopping tools because there lacks satisfactory product that can well meet their physical and psychological needs. Most products are targeting young people;
2. Different from young people, seniors show a strong preference for minimal functions, bigger fonts, and the availability of human support services when they meet obstacles. Also, they prefer physical products than pure digital products. Physical products make them feel much more reliable;
3. A neglected fact is that senior citizen focused online shopping product does not only provide big socially values, it can be a viable business as well: 92% of the seniors have substantial needs and time/financial budgets for online shopping, because they want to be capable and contributivein social life instead of becoming a burden to others.

These findings inspired the team to invent a physical, companion-like shopping robot that is dedicated for the best user experiences of the seniors. Also, to make it accepted by the market, its values need to be publicized.

With these, the team’s innovation activities include:

1. Inventing a shopping companion robot that can recognize its owner, help carry heavy stuff and provide essential online product and service shopping solutions;
2. Communicating with trust worthy products and service providers to gain collaborators for this shopping tool. By now, 2 business collaborators and 20 individual collaborators have registered;
3. Advocating for this invention via on-line social media channels and off-line events to message its values out to the market.

As results, the team achieved 6,000+ online views and 100+ offline participators, gained 2 senior clubs as first clients, and 90%+ of the first individual users expressed willingness to continue using and recommend it to others.

To further develop our project, we are doing these two things:

1. As we collaborate more with the senior clubs, we begin to receive support from the local community regulators where these clubs are. They help connect us with the trust worthy potential product and service collaborators. Along this direction, we will explore such opportunities with more local communities.
2. We are in discussion with Happy Homeland Senior Service Apartment for co-development. They have national network and the same mission to support seniors via technology. We hope with their joining, our invention can serve Chinese seniors on a national scale. </aside>

Team Poster

Project Document

Project Document

A research on Senior People Online Consumption in China - FINAL.pdf