Driven by the surge in consumer demand and favorable national policies, aging-friendly renovation has become a well-deserved new outlet for home blue ocean consumption.
At present, my country's population is aging. The results of the seventh national census show that in 2020, my country's population aged 60 and over will be 264 million, accounting for 18.7%; and under my country's "9073" elderly care pattern, about 90% of the elderly choose to care for themselves at home. How to better care for and care for the elderly so that they can live in a comfortable and safe environment has become an important issue.
In the home scene, the emergence of intelligent and aging-friendly home appliance technology provides new solutions for ensuring the health and quality of life of the elderly. However, as a special consumer group, the elderly have very different psychological and behavioral characteristics from those of young consumers. Especially in recent years, as the number of elderly people living alone and empty nesters has increased, the safety and unsuitability of products when they use home appliances have become increasingly prominent. So, what kind of smart home appliances do the elderly need? Are there standards to follow for the development and design of aging-friendly products? With the above questions in mind, corresponding research was conducted.
Design is more friendly
Faced with the broad market prospects of the silver economy, more and more companies are developing and expanding their business around aging services. Midea launched the high-tech aging-friendly home appliance brand "Meiyixiang"; Haier established an aging-friendly industry platform to build a whole-home aging-friendly ecosystem; Gree released the "Xintianweng" remote control with a simpler button arrangement and larger fonts. series of air conditioners; Panasonic has launched products including smart electric beds, folding shower chairs and other products to help the elderly with their daily lives and travel... "Ageing-friendly" is accelerating in the field of home appliances and home furnishings.
In life, are these products really more friendly to the elderly? When visiting some home appliance brands, shopping guides can recommend models based on the requirements of "suitable for the elderly". These products generally have relatively simple functions. But the elderly still need to be taught repeatedly. They may learn it the first time but forget it later.
At present, most home appliances are designed for general consumer groups based on their intended use. Especially since our country is currently in the stage of rapid development of population aging, this requires that the "needs of the elderly" cannot be ignored in product design and standard formulation, thus Derived the concept of products suitable for aging.
Ali consumption data shows that from 2020 to 2022, the compound growth rate of Taoxi home care space market sales is nearly 20%, and the sales scale in 2022 will exceed 10 billion yuan. At the same time, under the guidance of policies, both first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and grassroots counties are actively promoting aging-friendly transformation and renewal, effectively driving the supply of home aging-friendly products and services from being complex and homogeneous to systematic and diversified.
Based on Haier Smart Home's years of research and development of age-appropriate home appliances, Haier has taken the convenience of user experience as its direction and made innovations in safety, health, humanization and other aspects: the Guan Ai series washing machine with large fonts and buttons, which can understand the dialect and accent of the elderly. The AI voice smart fresh-keeping refrigerator, the Casarte Galaxy air conditioner that can be linked to a smart pillow to feel the sleeping status of the elderly... are all Haier's explorations in adapting to aging based on the needs of elderly users.
Smart home appliances suitable for aging products should not only satisfy intelligent control, but also serve people. The elderly’s demand for smart appliances and smart homes is essentially a demand for scenarios. Take the kitchen scene as an example. What they want is not a refrigerator or an oven, but they want to store fresher food and eat healthier. The person in charge of the Haier Smart Home Appliances Business said that Haier has now made a comprehensive layout for aging products, scenarios and ecology, based on the development trend of "single product intelligence - complete set of interconnection - scene customization - ecological services", and continues to Improve the aging-friendly ecology and provide solutions to the problem of population aging.
Focus on user guidance
Smart economy and silver economy are both general trends, but from the actual situation, the growth of aging-friendly products is not as significant as expected. According to relevant data, as a front-row player representing aging-friendly home appliances, within a rolling year from February 2022 to January 2023, the sales of Meiyixiang related products on Taobao Tmall platform were only 13.008 million yuan, while Midea only During the "Double 11" period in 2022, 13.5 billion yuan was sold on Tmall. This sales performance obviously does not match the potential of the silver economy.
What kind of aging products do the elderly need? The "2023 China Home Care Space Consumption Trend Insights" report shows that the current consumption of home care-related products is dominated by the filial piety economy, with children accounting for more than 70% of the consumer group. The driving factors for children to make aging-friendly home modifications for their parents are physical decline, memory loss and health concerns, while middle-aged and elderly people are more likely to make modifications because of safety accidents and poor living experience.
Compared with young consumer groups who pay more attention to the functional richness and personalized customization of products, the elderly are more inclined to simple and intuitive operating interfaces and functional designs. They have higher requirements for product safety and convenience. In addition, the elderly have more prominent needs for health management and care, such as health monitoring, smart reminders, emergency help and other functions. They will also pay attention to whether products can provide customized health services.
Product providers and industry parties need to work together to continue user education and training, improve product ease of use and user experience, strengthen security and privacy protection, and provide more reasonably priced product choices, all of which are needed to solve the problem of smart product implementation. key to difficult problems.
In recent years, middle-aged and elderly people have awakened their awareness of self-improvement, and the popularity of the concept of aging-friendly transformation has increased, but the action rate is still low. The elderly do not know that some products are suitable for them, and young children do not know that some of the inconvenient problems of the elderly in life can be solved through products. Therefore, in the field of suitable aging products, special attention should be paid to guiding consumer groups so that more elderly people can purchase and popularize them.
Strengthen standard supply
In 2022, the State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the National Aging Care Development and Elderly Care Service System", which requires the development and expansion of the elderly products industry, focusing on the development of daily products such as age-appropriate household appliances and furniture. It is foreseeable that driven by the surge in consumer demand and favorable national policies, aging-friendly renovation has become a well-deserved new outlet for home blue ocean consumption.
There are already standards for how companies should do this. In recent years, the State Administration for Market Regulation has actively played a leading role in standards. In order to adapt to the needs of "silver hair" and strengthen the supply of aging-friendly transformation standards, it has formulated and issued the "General Technical Requirements for Household Appliances Suitable for the Elderly" and "Household Appliances for Elderly Assistance" National standards for aging-friendly home appliances such as "Smart Home Appliance System Architecture Model" and "General Safety Requirements for Smart Home Appliance Systems for Living Assistance for the Elderly" address aspects such as product operation methods, function settings, human-computer interaction interfaces, and product safety. In response, the basic structure of the national standard system for elderly-friendly home appliances products and systems has been basically built.
However, there are currently a wide variety of smart home appliances on the market with different functions. They not only have functions such as remote APP control and voice interaction, but are also equipped with touch control keys, LED displays and other components. The diversification of functions also complicates operations, making the elderly face more and more obstacles when using these products. Therefore, no matter how technology develops, aging-friendly home appliances must first consider safety, followed by accessibility and ease of use. In addition, product functionality, reliability, comfort, etc. are all factors that need to be considered.
In the future, the industry should focus on how to make aging-friendly home appliances and systems more suitable for the elderly, and strive to solve common issues of high concern, such as the application of artificial intelligence in smart products and systems. By strengthening the development of relevant standards, we will provide technical guidelines for the development, design and testing of aging-friendly home appliances and intelligent systems, break down ecological barriers to the use of various brands of home appliances, further expand the effective supply of aging-friendly products, and meet the special needs of the elderly. .
Standards escort development, and services must keep up. For the fourth consecutive year, JD.com has launched a shopping festival of filial piety and love for the elderly, providing full-link service guarantees such as trade-in for old ones, 180-day returns and exchanges, all-inclusive delivery, installation and disassembly, space bureau modifications, and decoration with remote tracking of progress; Suning.com APP The "Elder Mode" function has been upgraded to allow users over 60 years old to make direct after-sales calls and receive immediate calls; Haier Smart Home provides free home appliance maintenance services for the elderly during the Double Ninth Festival...
The entire aging industry is worth doing again. In the past, in this industry, those who made goods, those who made logistics, those who made services were separated from each other. Now, based on the comprehensive upgrade of the aging-friendly product supply chain, services and aging-friendly transformation capabilities, relevant industrial institutions We are working hard to provide one-stop home care solutions for the elderly. The development prospects and market space of the aging industry are unlimited.
Content source: Economic Daily
