Residents of Nanwenying Community, Rongdong District, Xiong'an New District, Hebei Province, use self-service terminals to handle business at community convenience service stations. Photographed by Zhu Xudong, reporter of Xinhua News Agency

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 rising. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2023, the added value of the service industry will account for 54.6% of the GDP, contributing 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 quality improvement of the life service industry to better meet the people's growing needs for a better life.

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 recently he was busy decorating his new house, so he didn't have time to go to the site to monitor the progress. After comparison, he chose the digital home decoration service provided by the bedclothes. During the decoration, he connected the camera on the construction site through his mobile phone to view the decoration site in real time and keep track of the decoration progress at any time. The final house decoration period is 5 days earlier than expected.

"You can order food by scanning the code with your mobile phone, and you can also complete the price, quantity and other information, and you can also check out online." Li Li, a customer who uses Alipay's small program to scan the code and order food in a hot pot shop in Chengdu, Sichuan, said. After ordering, the order starts to flow in the digital management system of the restaurant. After a while, all the dishes were served. Song Qi, the head of the restaurant, said that the linkage between the front office and the back kitchen is very important for the operation of the restaurant. Previously, waiters wrote records according to customers' requirements, which was easy to make mistakes in the process of connecting the front office and the back kitchen, affecting consumers' dining experience. Now customers order their own meals, 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 the 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 emerging, bringing new experiences to consumers and injecting new power into the quality and capacity improvement of the industry.

According to the data released by Meituan, the frequency of residents' consumption of life services is increasing year by year. In 2023, the transaction volume of domestic service, washing, maintenance and other life services will increase by 100% year on year. The proportion of consumers aged 20-35 will exceed 70%. The third tier and below cities will grow rapidly. New segmented services represented by sorting, collection, land reclamation and cleaning emerged, becoming a new growth point in the life service market. The popularity of home appliance maintenance 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 the sales volume of group purchase has increased by 150%.

The Overall Layout Plan for the Construction of Digital China issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council clearly stated that "we should popularize the intelligence of digital life, create a smart and convenient life circle, a new type of digital consumption business, and an intelligent immersive service experience for the future". In December last year, 12 departments including the Ministry of Commerce jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Digital Empowerment of Life Services, which proposed 19 specific tasks and measures focusing on five aspects, including enriching application scenarios and complementing development weaknesses, to guide and promote the digital transformation and upgrading of the life services industry and achieve high-quality development.

"Digitization is an important direction and an effective path for the expansion and quality improvement of the life service industry." Hong Yong, associate researcher of the E-commerce Research Institute of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, believes that accelerating the promotion of life service industry digitalization and enriching the application scenarios of life service digitalization can effectively improve the consumption experience. We should continue to support the enhancement of digital empowerment in areas closely related to people's lives, such as business services, transportation, culture and 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, you can check out at any time through your mobile phone, and you can also automatically receive coupons." Recently, in a Lianhua supermarket in Xihu District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, Guo Lihua, a consumer who came to shop, scanned the goods in front of the camera installed on the shopping cart, and could see all the prices of the goods, and then self-service checkout. If the selected goods have a discount, the supermarket will push the coupon through Alipay applet and automatically deduct it at checkout. This smart shopping cart brings consumers a convenient shopping experience of shopping, collecting vouchers and settling accounts at the same time, and also helps businesses reduce costs and increase efficiency. It is estimated that after using the smart shopping cart, the per customer price of the supermarket has increased by about 20% on average.

Li Yongjian, a researcher of the Institute of Finance and Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that China's 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 process of modern service industry.

To promote the digital transformation of the life service industry, we should actively support the development of new technologies, new formats and new models. Provide digital scene support for transformation and upgrading of traditional life service enterprises by building a digital enabling center for life services and cultivating a digital platform for life services. It is also necessary to support technological innovation and explore the potential of digital development by strengthening the application of digital technology.

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 convenient life circle, optimize and improve the comprehensive service capacity of convenient people such as food delivery, goods delivery, food delivery, medicine delivery, and strengthen the promotion and application of intelligent devices such as intelligent charging piles, logistics vehicles, intelligent food collection cabinets, intelligent express (mail) boxes, and automatic fresh food terminals, so as to provide community residents with more security Comfortable and convenient digital intelligent living environment.

"When the trouser legs are open, it can be easily solved without leaving the community." In a community in Meixi Lake, Changsha City, Hunan Province, the Swan went home to the community butler shop, and the resident Cai Jia felt the convenience of community life services. This small shop embedded in the community has added new services such as dry cleaning, skill training, sewing, etc. on the basis of providing residents with traditional housekeeping services such as cooking part-time jobs, various cleaning, nannies, childcare sister-in-law, elderly care workers, etc. "We give full play to the advantages of system digitalization, service standardization and full chain security system accumulated over the years, increase the supply of high-quality community housekeeping services, and provide residents with one-stop home service solutions." Xiao Dianxun, the relevant person in charge of Swan Home, said.

Speed up the improvement of weak points and consolidate the foundation for development

"It used to be more convenient to go to the entrance of the community when you wanted to take a taxi," said Lin Shuhai, a 69 year old retired college teacher in Yangpu District, Shanghai. "My wife needs to go to the hospital frequently 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 Elderly Edition" applet. It is easy to take a taxi without entering the destination. At the end of the journey, choose online or offline payment according to the actual mileage.

It is reported that as of September 30, 2023, Didi's taxi service for the elderly has covered 355 cities, providing more than 100 million taxi trips for 3.85 million elderly people, with a total 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 adaptation of mobile phones, smart televisions, intelligent rehabilitation aids and other information accessibility construction, 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 has to face the problem of unbalanced development of digitalization between industries, regions and upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. In this regard, relevant enterprises should play a leading role in helping more enterprises in the life service industry accelerate their digital transformation.

Experts suggest that we should focus on the problems of imperfect digital infrastructure construction in the life service industry, relative lack of intelligent technology suitable for the elderly and disabled, insufficient digital talents, and data security to be strengthened, strengthen the construction of digital infrastructure for life services, and improve the application and service of digital age and disability assistance, Cultivate digital professionals, enhance data security protection and integration application capabilities, and further consolidate the basis for high-quality development of life services.

Hong Yong believes that with the continuous advancement of digitalization of life services, the future application scenarios are expected to be further enriched. For example, in the field of transportation, we will accelerate the construction of smart railways, smart highways, smart ports, smart waterways, and smart civil aviation; In the field of culture and tourism, develop new business forms and models such as virtual display, smart tour, online broadcast, etc; In the field of education, build a new model of online and offline in-depth integration; In the medical and health field, optimize services such as Internet hospitals, telemedicine, and online health consulting.

The relevant person in charge of the Department of Service Trade and Trade Services of the Ministry of Commerce said that he would work with all departments and regions to implement policies, promote the digital transformation and upgrading of the life service industry, give play to the important role of the life service industry in promoting consumption, benefiting people's livelihood and stabilizing employment, and better serve to build a new development pattern.

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