CHINA - Supermarket Environment Design
T
he population of certain parts of the world is ageing, offering a rationale for this study. A key factor that fails to be addressed in related literature is the issue of culture and how this impacts on elderly consumers’ behaviour patterns when shopping. Within the globalized retail industry, China is regarded as the biggest and most profitable overseas market by major international firms such as Tesco (UK), Wal-Mart (US), Carrefour (France) and Metor AG (Germany). However, due to the fact that cultural orientation plays a significant role in shaping consumers’ shopping behaviour, consumers in China may have different requirements and needs within a supermarket service environment. Thus, it is important to explore Chinese elderly consumers’ shopping behaviour and experience so as to provide effective supermarket service to this group of consumer in China. Therefore, this project aims to investigate difficulties and challenges that Chinese elderly consumers face in a supermarket environment so as to understand the way in which supermarket retailers can improve their service for the elderly consumers in China.
A
n ethnographic design approach, which combines video-based direct observations and in-depth interviews, has been employed to explore Chinese elderly consumers supermarket shopping experience. 12 Chinese senior citizens above 60 years of age and able to undertake their own shopping at least once fortnightly joined this research project as participants. Each participant was required to visit 2 retailers in Beijing so as to collect sufficient data of his/her shopping experience for analysis. It has been found that the main difficulties that Chinese senior consumers face at supermarkets include: problems with reading information on product package), poor access to products where items were placed too low or too high and poor signage. Based on the findings, guidelines for improving the design of some elements to improve and enhance the service to older consumers is proposed.
