Title: Silver Shoppers: designing a better supermarket service for the older consumer
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: It has been forecasted that the number of old people in the UK is projected to increase to 15.9 million over the 25 years period and China will have over 440 million people aged over 60. As a result of this substantial demographic shift, many researchers have highlighted that the elderly consumer segment, which has been considered as less profitable in the market in the past, is now a valuable and vital consumer segment for retailers. The UK retail market has been mainly monopolised by major multiple retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury, ASDA and Marks and Spencer in recent years. Due to the increasing competitive pressure from the multiple retailers, the local retail shops, which are easier to access than the multiple retailers, offer a smaller range of products and tend to be popular among older people, are closing down rapidly. This is supported by the fact that at least 577 supermarket stores have been approved across the United Kingdom over the past 2 years and 12,000 local retail shops have closed down during this period of time (BBC, 2010). As elderly consumers traditionally rely on local retail stores for their grocery needs and as a means to socialise, the decline of small local grocers has led to older people feeling disadvantaged as the number of stores for them to shop has been reduced (Szmigin et al., 2003). Given the influence of multiple retailers in the retail industry, it is important to investigate the problem areas that elderly consumers face within the supermarket environment. Within the globalised retail industry, China is regarded as the biggest and most profitable overseas market. Since cultural background plays a significant role in shaping consumers' shopping behaviour (Wang et al, 2010), consumers from different countries might have diverse requirements and needs within a supermarket service environment. Several major international firms, such as Tesco (UK), Wal-Mart (US) and Carrefour (France), are attempting to provide better services to both China and their home markets. Thus, it is important to explore the differences between the UK and Chinese consumers' shopping behaviour and experience, in turn, to discover possibilities for developing universal design solutions to improve the supermarket service and environment for elderly consumers in the UK and China. This project aims to fill this gap in knowledge so that better provisions can be offered to this growing market segment. In order to achieve the research aim, a literature review, focus groups, an ethnographic user studies and co-design workshops will be employed as research methods. 1) The literature review focuses on an exploration of the key factors that influence the elderly consumers' shopping behaviour and experience from previous studies in ageing research, elderly consumers, design for ageing and retail service design areas. 2) The focus group exercises will help to explore key issues associated with the UK and Chinese elderly consumer's shopping behaviour and experience, within their respective cultural contexts, by evaluating identified key factors from the literature reviews. 3) The ethnographic user study, which includes Cultural Probes - an elderly consumer's shopping experience information-gathering package, video-based direct observation, in-depth interviews and a questionnaire survey, will be conducted to investigate the difficulties and challenges that the UK and Chinese elderly consumers currently face during their shopping process. Finally, 4) the co-design workshops will aim to promote better product and service design ideas, concepts and prototypes for improving the supermarket environment and service for the elderly consumers in the UK and Chain. In order to produce high quality design outputs, design staff and students from the leading design schools - Brunel University (UK) and Tsinghua University (China)- will be responsible for the new product design and development in the project.


Research activity codes: 1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE