WAVEMAKER CHINA INSIGHTS | Revisiting Seniors in China – the Future Growth Driver

Living in a youth-obsessed environment, people are not paying enough attention to the ageing population. “Ageing society” is not a new concept, yet looking from the outside, perception and understanding on it could be insufficient and ambiguous. The impact of ageing society is not “yet to come”, but “already here”.

Despite the great potential of the ageing market, younger generations are still the main focus for most brands at the moment, while knowledge and understanding of seniors remain limited and shallow. Moreover, there are quite a few misunderstandings on seniors, such as distant from “now” and falling behind the times, facing health challenges, need to be taken care of, living a life that seems lonely and boring, easily getting deceived, etc. Are these true? What are seniors like? What are the business opportunities there? There are quite a few questions that haven’t been well addressed. In this “SENIORS IN CHINA: THE ‘HIDDEN TREASURE’” report released by Wavemaker, we named the 1st Chapter “REVISITING SENIORS IN CHINA”. We would like you to join us, to meet the seniors again, and to remove any possible stereotyped and biased perceptions.

Seniors are no doubt the “Growth Opportunity for NOW” and “Growth Driver for FUTURE”.

They are increasingly a driving force for Internet economy growth.

• 96% use smart phone on a daily basis
• 65% claim that “I like surfing the Internet very much”
• 40% claim that they would often shop online, e.g. Taobao, Pinduoduo
• 48% claim that they would often use online payment, e.g. Alipay

Is China’s population really growing “old”? The seniors say “no”.

The perceived extension of middle age signifies a redefinition of “old”.

As the boundary between middle age and old age becomes increasingly blurred, middle age lengthens, and the psychological perception of “growing old" sets in later.

l Seniors not only live the length of life, but they also live the breadth of it.

With a new lease on life, seniors explore the possibilities of life more freely and with more courage than ever before. The potential of the ageing population is already apparent and “vitality" doesn’t begin to describe their mindset.

l They have developed “ageing procrastination” syndrome. According to them, 50 y/o below are “youth”, 66 y/o below are “middle age”.

They have proved that “getting older is terrible” terribly wrong. Instead, it is a new milestone to celebrate, and a new adventure to the fullness of life.

Seniors in China cannot be generalised as a single group, but need to be redefined and segmented.

We look at “current” and “future” seniors, and have redefined them into 3 generations based on the sociocultural context of China and Generational Cohort Analysis.

WITNESS OF REVOLUTION, “A cog in the machine” to create collective value (born between 1934-1950)

TOUGHENED NEW-CHINA 1ST GENERATION, missed opportunities but now restarting life (born between 1951-1963)

THE OPENING UP NEWBORNS, benefiting from economic and cultural opening (born between 1964-1977)

They live life with great passion and energy, aspire to keep up with society and create their own values.

They are financially savvy

They save more, but spend even more

They are embracing the digital era

This report contains 4 chapters and an epilogue, to reveal this topic from different dimensions. Follow us for more chapters coming:

Chapter 2: The “Hidden Value” and Social Power (2020.01)

Chapter 3: Who They Were, and Who They Are (2020.03)

Chapter 4: Reaching Their Hearts, Co-Creating Experiences (2020.05)

Epilogue: Seniors in Others’ Eyes, and Life in Their Eyes (2020.07)

The SENIORS IN CHINA: THE “HIDDEN TREASURE” report series will be released over the next 8 months. Thank you for your attention.

To deeply study the ageing population, we’ve been through three research phases lasted for 18 months:

• Anthropological cultural scanning (to trace the socio-cultural changes)
• Ethnography (to deep dive on their life stories and real thoughts)
• Quantification (to validate via offline face-to-face survey data)

We got into their real lives, hearing their stories and thoughts, and capturing their joys and sorrows

We hope you can join us!

The needs of seniors truly deserve our attention as they created what we have today. Moving forward, we shall think about how we can create a better tomorrow, for them, and also for ourselves.

We welcome different organizations, experts and pioneers to join us, to pay attention to the ageing society and their needs.

We invite you to co-create the content of Chapter 4 with us, with curiosity and imagination of the future, and how we can all contribute to build a better world together.

For content co-creation, media release, business cooperation, please contact: [email protected]

Click below to read the Full Chapter