Life service industry accelerates digital transformation.

Enrich application scenarios and improve consumer experience, and new formats and new models are constantly emerging.

Life service industry accelerates digital transformation.

Life service industry is an important field to promote consumption, benefit people’s livelihood and stabilize employment. With the acceleration of high-quality development, the proportion of life service consumption in total service consumption has been increasing. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2023, the added value of the service industry accounted for 54.6% of the GDP and contributed more than 60% to economic growth. The per capita service consumption expenditure of residents increased by 14.4%, accounting for 45.2% of the per capita consumption expenditure, an increase of 2 percentage points over the previous year.

At present, what are the new trends and highlights of the life service industry, and how to promote the expansion and upgrading of the life service industry to better meet the people’s growing needs for a better life? The reporter interviewed this.

Enrich application scenarios and optimize consumption experience.

"The whole decoration service is visible, convenient and reassuring." Zhang Feng, a resident of a residential area in Chaoyang District, Beijing, said that he didn’t have time to go to the scene to watch the progress because of his busy work. After comparison, he chose the digital home improvement service provided by the bedding package. During the renovation, he connected the camera of the construction site through his mobile phone, so that he could check the renovation site in real time and keep abreast of the renovation progress. In the end, the renovation period of the house was 5 days earlier than expected.

"You can order food by scanning the code with your mobile phone, and you can also check out online with information such as price and weight." In a hot pot restaurant in Chengdu, Sichuan, Li Li, a customer who uses Alipay applet to scan the code to order food, said. After ordering, the order began to flow in the restaurant digital management system. Soon, all the dishes were on the table. Song Qi, the head of the restaurant, said that the linkage between the front hall and the back kitchen is very important for the operation of the restaurant. In the past, waiters wrote records by hand according to customers’ requirements, and it was easy to make mistakes in the docking process between the front hall and the back kitchen, which affected the dining experience of consumers. Now customers order their own food, and the information is automatically transmitted to the kitchen. The whole process is digital, convenient and accurate.

In recent years, with the wide application of a new generation of information technology represented by big data, cloud computing, blockchain, etc., the digital transformation and upgrading trend of the life service industry is obvious, and new formats and new models are constantly emerging, bringing new experiences to consumers and injecting new impetus into the upgrading and expansion of the industry.

According to the data released by Meituan, the consumption frequency of residents’ living services is increasing year by year. In 2023, the transaction volume of domestic services such as housekeeping, washing and maintenance increased by 100% year-on-year, and consumers aged 20-35 accounted for more than 70%, with rapid growth in third-tier and below cities. The emergence of subdivided new services, such as sorting and storage, land reclamation and cleaning, has become a new growth point in the life service market. The popularity of home appliance repair and other services, including trade-in, has increased. As of March 12, the number of merchants providing trade-in services on Meituan has increased by 300% year-on-year, and group purchase sales have increased by 150%.

The "Overall Layout Plan of Digital China Construction" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council clearly stated that "the intelligentization of digital life should be popularized, and a smart and convenient life circle, a new digital consumption format and an intelligent immersive service experience for the future should be created". In December last year, the Ministry of Commerce and other 12 departments jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Digital Empowerment of Life Services, and put forward 19 specific tasks and measures around five aspects, such as enriching application scenarios and filling development shortcomings, to guide the digital transformation and upgrading of life service industry and achieve high-quality development.

"Digitalization is an important direction and effective path to expand and improve the quality of life service industry." Hong Yong, an associate researcher at the Institute of E-commerce of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, believes that accelerating the digitalization of the life service industry and enriching the application scenarios of the digitalization of life services can effectively improve the consumer experience. We must continue to support the strengthening of digital empowerment in areas closely related to people’s lives, such as business services, transportation, cultural tourism, education, medical care and health, and enrich digital application scenarios so that people can enjoy more efficient, convenient and high-quality life services.

Improve service efficiency and increase effective supply.

"As long as the goods are put into the shopping cart, they can be checked out by mobile phone at any time, and they can automatically receive coupons." Recently, in a Lianhua supermarket in Xihu District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, Guo Lihua, a consumer who came to shop, put the goods in front of the camera installed on the shopping cart and scanned them, so that he could see the prices of all the goods and then check out by himself. If the selected goods have discounts, the supermarket will push the coupons through Alipay applet and automatically deduct them at checkout. This smart shopping cart brings consumers a convenient shopping experience while shopping, collecting coupons and settling accounts, and also helps businesses reduce costs and increase efficiency. According to estimates, after using the smart shopping cart, the unit price of supermarket customers has increased by about 20% on average.

Li Yongjian, a researcher in national academy of economic strategy, believes that China’s consumer demand for living services is growing, but the effective supply is relatively insufficient, and the service efficiency and level need to be improved. Accelerating the embrace of digitalization can improve service efficiency, increase effective supply and accelerate the development of modern service industry.

To promote the digital transformation of the life service industry, we must actively support the development of new technologies, new formats and new models. By building a digital life service empowerment center and cultivating a digital life service platform, we will provide digital scene support for the transformation and upgrading of traditional life service enterprises. It is also necessary to strengthen the application of digital technology, support technological innovation, and explore the potential of digital development.

Community is the main place of life service industry. Hong Yong said that it is necessary to build a digital life service community and block, improve the service function of a quarter-hour convenience life circle, optimize and improve the comprehensive convenience service capabilities such as food delivery, delivery, food delivery and medicine delivery, and strengthen the popularization and application of intelligent devices such as intelligent charging piles, logistics vehicles, intelligent take-out cabinets, intelligent express mail (letter package) boxes and automatic fresh food sales terminals to provide a safer, more comfortable and convenient digital intelligent living environment for community residents.

"The trousers are open, and it can be easily solved without leaving the community." Cai Jia, a resident, felt the convenience of community life service at the Swan Home Community Butler Store in a community of Meixi Lake in Changsha, Hunan. This small shop embedded in the community has added new services such as dry cleaning, skills training and sewing on the basis of providing residents with traditional domestic services such as cooking hourly workers, various cleaning, nanny, child-rearing sister-in-law and old-age care workers. "We give full play to the advantages of system digitalization, service standardization and full chain guarantee system accumulated for many years, increase the supply of high-quality community domestic service, and provide residents with one-stop family service solutions." Xiao Dianxun, the person in charge of Swan’s arrival, said.

Accelerate the filling of shortcomings and lay a solid foundation for development.

"It used to be much more convenient to call a car and walk to the door of the community." Lin Shuhai, a 69-year-old retired college teacher in Yangpu District, Shanghai, said that his wife often needs to go to the hospital for physical examination, but it is inconvenient to move, and every round trip is a problem. Now, Lin Shuhai can call a taxi with one button through the "Didi Senior Edition" applet, and can easily take a taxi without entering the destination. At the end of the trip, choose online or offline payment according to the actual mileage.

According to reports, as of September 30, 2023, Didi taxi service has covered 355 cities, providing more than 100 million taxi services for 3.85 million elderly people, with a cumulative service mileage of about 800 million kilometers.

Experts said that it is necessary to improve digital applications and services for the elderly and the disabled, promote the aging transformation and information barrier-free construction of mobile phones, smart TVs and intelligent rehabilitation AIDS, and develop intelligent terminal products suitable for the elderly and the disabled.

Li Yongjian said that the digitalization of the life service industry has achieved remarkable results, but it still faces the problem of uneven digital development level between industries, regions and upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. In this regard, relevant enterprises should play a leading role and help more life service enterprises to accelerate digital transformation.

Experts suggest that efforts should be made to fill the shortcomings, focusing on the imperfect digital infrastructure construction of life service industry, the relative lack of intelligent technology suitable for the elderly and the disabled, the shortage of digital talents, and the need to strengthen data security, so as to strengthen the digital infrastructure construction of life services, improve digital applications and services for the elderly and the disabled, cultivate digital professionals, enhance the ability of data security protection and integration application, and further consolidate the foundation for high-quality development of life services.

Hong Yong believes that with the continuous advancement of digitalization of life services, future application scenarios are expected to be further enriched. For example, in the field of transportation, accelerate the construction of smart railways, smart highways, smart ports, smart waterways and smart civil aviation; In the field of cultural tourism, develop new formats and new modes such as virtual display, intelligent navigation and online broadcast; In the field of education, build a new model of deep integration between online and offline; In the field of medical and health care, optimize services such as Internet hospitals, telemedicine and online health consultation.

The relevant person in charge of the Department of Service Trade and Business Services of the Ministry of Commerce said that it will work with various departments and localities to do a good job in policy implementation, promote the digital transformation and upgrading of the life service industry, and give play to the important role of the life service industry in promoting consumption, benefiting people’s livelihood and stabilizing employment, and better serve and build a new development pattern. (Reporter Kelly)