Analysis of Market Opportunities in the Family-Care in Communities Service

Research Article
Open access

Analysis of Market Opportunities in the Family-Care in Communities Service

Jinghan Zhang 1 , Keyi Hu 2*
  • 1 Xian International University    
  • 2 Hunan University of Technology and Business    
  • *corresponding author hlx4849@163.com
Published on 11 July 2025 | https://doi.org/10.54254/2754-1169/2024.24987
AEMPS Vol.202
ISSN (Print): 2754-1177
ISSN (Online): 2754-1169
ISBN (Print): 978-1-80590-263-8
ISBN (Online): 978-1-80590-264-5

Abstract

At present, the trend of aging in China is constantly intensifying, and the growth of the elderly care service industry urgently needs to be expanded and updated. Among them, the popularization and popularization of the family care form are faced with more urgent innovation and the reshaping of the traditional format. This study based on the existing research, through interviews and surveys, combined with the advantages of community family care service, for the smart family care platform construction, to serve the elderly population more mature development model, promote the innovation of family care service, provide new development ideas for China's pension industry.

Keywords:

component, family care service, smart elderly care platform, construction

Zhang,J.;Hu,K. (2025). Analysis of Market Opportunities in the Family-Care in Communities Service. Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences,202,15-22.
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1. Introduction

China is currently experiencing a rapid aging-related development. Over 280 million elderly people (or 19.8% of the total population) were 60 years of age or older by the end of 2022, and 210 million elderly people (or 14.9% of the total population) were 65 years of age or older. The state of the aging population is dire. The senior care sector has seen new opportunities as well as challenges as a result of the population's steady increase. At the same time, because Chinese people divide the connotation of filial piety into seven aspects: support, care, respect, advice, love, comfort and mourning, these special norms for children almost stipulate all the behaviors for parents in their life, so Chinese people have a long-term and far-reaching demand for elderly care services [1]. At the present stage, there is a trend of changing from the traditional fixed and single form to the diversified, novel and flexible intelligent elderly care service. Therefore, how to screen and define the core needs of the contemporary elderly population and provide practical and feasible solutions has become the key demand for the development of the elderly care service industry in the new era [2].

The current old-age service system can be broadly classified into four types according to the 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Old-Age system: family care, community care, institutional care, and the combination of medical and nursing care [3]. Based on this, some scholars contend that the Chinese system of elderly care services has accomplished the following fundamental goals: (1) the system's development has increasingly achieved a clear goal and direction; (2) the elderly care is becoming more and more socialized and commercialized; (3) the quality of the services has improved; (4) there has been an increasing focus on the advancement of family and community care; and (5) there has been an increasing focus on the integration of medical care with elderly care services [4].

However, China continues to prioritize family and institutional care over the role of community-based elderly care service platforms [5]. The construction of elderly care institutions and the elderly in terms of structure and service constitute the first gap in China's elderly care service system, which is still in its early stages of exploration. The second gap is between the needs of aging and the new economic and social development situation and the demand for elderly care services [6]. As a result, it is crucial to address the disparity between the demand and supply for family care services as well as the incomplete service to investigate new family care models.

In view of this, this paper through the survey and interview method, customer demand and market status, build smart family care service platform model, from the customer demand, the implementation of personality information collection and service promotion, aims to refine and deepen the family care platform more fit public demand service means and service level, promote the development of family care service innovative, intelligent construction.

2. Literature review

2.1. Family care mode

As a kind of elderly care service industry- - - -family care, it has become the first choice of an increasing number of elderly people for elderly care services. First of all, family care meets the retention and continuity of the form of family organization linked by blood and kinship [7]. Every family that has existed has been responsible for both raising children and providing for the elderly since the beginning of time. Moreover, in the long human history after the formation of the family, almost only the family has the duty to care the old and the young. Secondly, compared with institutional care, family care has the characteristics of less investment, low cost, wide service, large income, low fee and quick effect, which can reduce the pressure of institutional care service. Therefore, family care is more common in the choice of elderly care services.

2.2. Defects and deficiencies

This paper uses the "TrSurvey of the people in China" from the China Research Center for Aging in 2010. This is a survey of urban and rural elderly people aged 60 and above, covering 80 cities in 20 provinces [8].

Table 1: Demand, supply and utilization of the home-based care for the aged

Services

Demand(%)

Supply(%)

Utillization Rate(%)

Utillization to meet demand(%)

Housecalls

30.92

46.96

6.01

12.86

Accompany to see a doctor

17.51

16.91

0.86

4.36

On-call nursing

22.67

37.83

0.46

5.31

Health care

24.11

33.51

2.45

5.38

Chat

17.86

23.76

1.82

6.5

Helpline

25.44

30.49

1.51

4.11

Legal aid

26.75

54.07

1.43

4.76

Shopping

14.76

18.81

0.45

2.38

The aforementioned data suggests that there is a considerable need for family care services among the elderly, indicating a wide range of opportunities in the family care services industry. Following a phase of growth, the availability of family care services in the community has reached a certain level. However, the percentage of senior citizens who genuinely utilize these services is extremely low, with fewer than 7% of their needs being addressed. As a result, it is evident that the existing supply of senior care services is difficult to adjust to the demands of the elderly, and a major contributing factor to this issue is the ignorance of the variables that influence the elderly's need for specialized elderly care services. As a result, it is evident that the existing supply of senior care services is difficult to adjust to the demands of the elderly, and a major contributing factor to this issue is the ignorance of the variables that influence the elderly's need for specialized elderly care services. Therefore, the research objectives and problems that need to be resolved immediately for family care services are how to provide effective and appropriate services, how to improve the use and satisfaction of the elderly for elderly care services, and how to respond to the various service needs of the elderly population [9].

2.3. The consumption concept of the elderly

Following their gradual exit from the workforce, the living situation and range of activities of the elderly become more predictable, as do the types and locations of their consumer spending. According to the majority of research, older people have very stable, logical consumption motivations that are reasonable and practical [10].The notion of consumption among the elderly and the frugal, along with the stability of income and source, dictate that the elderly's level of consumption is typically lower than that of the working-age population, comprising between 50% and 80% of the latter's level of consumption [11, 12]. From the concept, the elderly acceptance of the new consumption concept is relatively low, the cognition of social elderly care service is lacking, but through the "consumption feedback", in general children can be the key to improve the elderly strength of elerly care service acceptance [13]. Thus it can be seen that the community family care service is not only a direct service for the elderly, but also an indirect service for the children of the elderly, a partial replacement of the functions of the elderly children, and a partial relief of the family care burden of the elderly children. The caregivers who participated in the interview believed that the use of elderly care services might harm the other party's interests, and thus cause family tension. Most of the participants who participated in the interview believe that the replacement of family care may make their children unfilial, although they also realize that such criticism has been significantly reduced in the society in recent years, they still worry, "afraid of jokes"; at the same time, the elderly who do not enjoy retirement benefits also worry that the service fee would cause financial burden to their children, because their income level is far from enough to pay the cost independently.

2.4. Hypothesis

Considering the above research background and current situation, in order to clarify the research direction of this paper, the following assumptions are made:

A)elderly people need the temporary life-care service.

B)elderly people need the medical and health service.

C)elderly people need the regular spiritual concern service.

D)elderly people’s children would pay for the temporary service

E)The maximum that children are willing to pay for this service per hour is greater than 3 times per month.

3. Method

3.1. Survey method

Survey method is a reliable investigation method for researchers to measure the investigated problems by using controlled measurement, and then collect them. In exploring the market opportunities of family care services, understanding and meeting the needs of customers is the key to success. Therefore, we choose the kano model to systematically analyze the customer needs, and identify and mine the personalized needs of special groups (such as the elderly).

3.2. Kano model

Based on an analysis of the effect of product demand on customer satisfaction, the kano model is a helpful tool for ranking and categorizing the nonlinear relationship between product performance and user pleasure. Obtaining the data through the survey is the key information for conducting the kano analysis study.

The research adopts the form of survey to explore the needs of customer from the aspects of life care, medical care, spiritual comfort and so on, and formulate product characteristics and improvement strategies. This survey is divided according to different age groups, with a total of 100 survey. According to the duration of the answer and the target age group, the valid survey is selected, which meets the scientific and statistical requirements

3.3. Interview method

Semi-structured interviews were used in this study to allow respondents more room to provide a more complete picture.

According to the suggestions in the literature, the interviewers should consider whether the respondents are representative and common when selecting the respondents. Representative refers to whether the respondents have a deep understanding of the topic of the study, and have professional nowledge and practical experience: consensus refers to whether the respondents are highly interested in the topic of the study. Based on the purpose of the survey and the above, we chose to interview three groups: community workers, management of the pension industry, and the elderly.

Refer to the interview outline similar to this study, and modify the original interview outline based on the relevant literature and the purpose and requirements to make it fit into this study. For different interviewees, we designed the following questions: a. The current situation and shortcomings of the current market b. The biggest challenges and problems facing the current market c. What services do users urgently need. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for the interviewees to collect relevant data for analysis and research. With the consent of the respondents, the researcher stored the interview information using the audio recording, and sorted out the analysis according to the obtained content.

4. Result

4.1. Survey

According to the KANO model, the first quadrant is the desired attribute, the second quadrant is the charm attribute, the third quadrant is the difference, and the fourth quadrant refers to the essential attribute.

图片
Figure 1: Kano model for home-based elderly care

(1) Priority principle of each demand in the planning of product function: necessary demand> charm demand> expected demand> no difference demand> reverse demand. When providing services, priority shall be given to providing regular physical examination and domestic cleaning services. The second is to provide the elderly training, the elderly travel, purchasing and special care services

(2) People over 60 years old have the lowest demand for services; the lowest willingness to purchase services. And the 20-50 years old group presents a huge consumption power. Consideration may be related to the economic conditions and the desire to consume.

(3) The maximum amount of money that consumers are willing to spend on a single item: the maximum value is 1000 and the minimum value is 10. The average number of purchases made by consumers was 3.93. It shows that the platform has consumer demand and consumption willingness.

4.2. Interviewing method

(1) At present, the pension industry is basically a false economic prosperity and is not highly profitable

(2) Create a single personalized service, to target specific groups, there may be market opportunities

(3) The people's consumption desire decreases with age

(4) Building platforms is challenging, but there are still opportunities

(5) The elderly's demand for spiritual comfort is on the rise

(6) Try to create an asset-light mode to reduce enterprise costs

5. Discussion

With the aging society increasing the problem of pension, it is worth studying how to adapt to the pension service to the rapid development of the current development of science and technology.

At present, we believe that there are many conditions for the outbreak of the pension market. Due to the characteristics of the pension demand, its development path is difficult to be completed independently by individual enterprises. Therefore, the supplier platform similar to centralized procurement or "Jingdong" will be the biggest value in the pension field. Therefore, we pay more attention to the construction of the pension platform, the construction of its network channels and the ability to integrate third-party service providers.

图片
Figure 2: Platform mechanism diagram for home-based elderly care

This model map is based on the imbalance of supply and demand for pension, the obligation to support children and the single industrial structure, and is jointly promoted by the organization and environmental technology. At present, the elderly consumer groups mainly have cognitive deviations in service providers, such as fear of being cheated and distrust of service quality. Service providers have no effective way to publicize their products to the main consumer groups, and they cannot provide personalized services. Through the construction of this platform, it has effectively built a bridge between consumers and suppliers, realizes the optimal allocation of resources, and promotes the diversified service modes. The community home care service model complies with the needs of the development of the group wisdom innovation era under the big data and the Internet platform, enhances the competitiveness of enterprises in the elderly care service industry, and provides new ideas for solving the problem of elderly care.

In summary, we can conclude the current economic situation in China.

And in the general background, there is a personalised demand for elderly care services, and there are new market opportunities. Based on our current research and combined with China's special market environment, we have created a special platform to create a personalised elderly service.

The chemical centre takes the intelligent system as the carrier to match the balance of supply and demand.


References

[1]. He Riqu. The Evolution of Chinese People's Concept of filial Piety since Modern Times [D]. Nanjing University, 2013.

[2]. Du P, Sun J J, ZHANG W J, et al. The needs of the elderly in China and the status quo of family and social resources for the elderly: An analysis based on the 2014 Chinese Elderly Social Tracking Survey [J]. Population Research, 2016, 40(06): 49-61.

[3]. Guo Lin.70 years of elderly care service in China (1949-2019): Evolution, policy evaluation and future thinking [J]. Social Security Review, 2019, 3(03): 48-64.

[4]. Wang Yanzhong, Long Yuqi.Progress, problems and Countermeasures of the construction of China's pension service system [J]. Journal of China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong, 2018, 12(02): 122-129.

[5]. Li Zhiming. Reform idea of "supply side" in China's elderly care service: Building a comprehensive elderly care service system based on community and serving home " [J]. Academic Research, 2016, (07): 99-104.

[6]. Qian Yaxian. Under the background of aging society endowment service system research [J]. Journal of theory, 2014. (01) : 162-165. The DOI: 10.16354 / j.carol carroll nki. 23-1013 / d. 2014.01.021.

[7]. Wang Yao. The Modernization Narrative of Rural China: From Local Literature to "New Local Literature" [J]. Chinese Social Sciences, 2023, (09): 46-60+205.

[8]. Guo P. Research on sampling and weighting methods of Chinese urban and rural elderly population status tracking survey [J]. Population and Development, 2013, 19(03): 77-84.

[9]. Wang Qiong. Demand for home-based care services in urban communities and its influencing factors: Based on national urban elderly population survey data [J]. Population Research, 2016, 40(01): 98-112.

[10]. Le Xin, PENG Xizhe. New understanding of elderly consumption and its Public policy thinking [J]. Fudan Journal (Social Science Edition), 2016, 58(02): 126-134.

[11]. Wang Jinying, Fu Xiubin. Econometric analysis of China's consumption function considering the change of population age structure: and the impact of population aging on consumption in China [J]. Population Research, 2006, (01): 29-36.

[12]. Li J M. Analysis of influencing factors of consumption demand of the elderly and forecast of growth of consumption demand of the elderly in China [J]. Population and Economy, 2001, (05): 10-16.

[13]. Tao Tao, YUAN Dian-Qi, LIU Wen-li. The influence of child support on the purchase intention of elderly Care services in urban and rural areas: An analysis based on the 2018 China Elderly Social Tracking Survey. Population Journal, 2021, 43 (01): 78-95. DOI: 10.16405/j.cnki.1004-129X.2021.01.007.


Cite this article

Zhang,J.;Hu,K. (2025). Analysis of Market Opportunities in the Family-Care in Communities Service. Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences,202,15-22.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

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ISBN:978-1-80590-263-8(Print) / 978-1-80590-264-5(Online)
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Conference date: 13 June 2025
Series: Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences
Volume number: Vol.202
ISSN:2754-1169(Print) / 2754-1177(Online)

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References

[1]. He Riqu. The Evolution of Chinese People's Concept of filial Piety since Modern Times [D]. Nanjing University, 2013.

[2]. Du P, Sun J J, ZHANG W J, et al. The needs of the elderly in China and the status quo of family and social resources for the elderly: An analysis based on the 2014 Chinese Elderly Social Tracking Survey [J]. Population Research, 2016, 40(06): 49-61.

[3]. Guo Lin.70 years of elderly care service in China (1949-2019): Evolution, policy evaluation and future thinking [J]. Social Security Review, 2019, 3(03): 48-64.

[4]. Wang Yanzhong, Long Yuqi.Progress, problems and Countermeasures of the construction of China's pension service system [J]. Journal of China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong, 2018, 12(02): 122-129.

[5]. Li Zhiming. Reform idea of "supply side" in China's elderly care service: Building a comprehensive elderly care service system based on community and serving home " [J]. Academic Research, 2016, (07): 99-104.

[6]. Qian Yaxian. Under the background of aging society endowment service system research [J]. Journal of theory, 2014. (01) : 162-165. The DOI: 10.16354 / j.carol carroll nki. 23-1013 / d. 2014.01.021.

[7]. Wang Yao. The Modernization Narrative of Rural China: From Local Literature to "New Local Literature" [J]. Chinese Social Sciences, 2023, (09): 46-60+205.

[8]. Guo P. Research on sampling and weighting methods of Chinese urban and rural elderly population status tracking survey [J]. Population and Development, 2013, 19(03): 77-84.

[9]. Wang Qiong. Demand for home-based care services in urban communities and its influencing factors: Based on national urban elderly population survey data [J]. Population Research, 2016, 40(01): 98-112.

[10]. Le Xin, PENG Xizhe. New understanding of elderly consumption and its Public policy thinking [J]. Fudan Journal (Social Science Edition), 2016, 58(02): 126-134.

[11]. Wang Jinying, Fu Xiubin. Econometric analysis of China's consumption function considering the change of population age structure: and the impact of population aging on consumption in China [J]. Population Research, 2006, (01): 29-36.

[12]. Li J M. Analysis of influencing factors of consumption demand of the elderly and forecast of growth of consumption demand of the elderly in China [J]. Population and Economy, 2001, (05): 10-16.

[13]. Tao Tao, YUAN Dian-Qi, LIU Wen-li. The influence of child support on the purchase intention of elderly Care services in urban and rural areas: An analysis based on the 2018 China Elderly Social Tracking Survey. Population Journal, 2021, 43 (01): 78-95. DOI: 10.16405/j.cnki.1004-129X.2021.01.007.