Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee survey: 98% white-collar consumers want to have household service robots
On the afternoon of December 26th, the Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee and the Shanghai Consumer Protection Foundation jointly hosted the fifth edition of the “Boosting Consumption and Protecting Rights” lecture hall. The “Survey Report on Service Consumption Demand and Trends in Shanghai 2024” released by the Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee also indicates that service consumption has become an important force in boosting consumption, and consumers’ demand for high-quality and intelligent services is growing. The artificial intelligence big model is expected to become a new opportunity for service consumption.
This survey mainly targeted white-collar consumers in first-tier and quasi-first-tier cities, with a total of 6,000 subscribers to the Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee official account invited to participate.
The survey shows that service consumption is gradually becoming an important driving force for boosting consumption. 85.62% of respondents expect the proportion of service consumption expenditure to increase in the future, with 43.85% believing that this expenditure will continue to grow. Currently, consumers’ pursuit of quality of life, emotional value, and health has become the main driving force behind the growth of service consumption. In terms of the service consumption items that respondents are most likely to purchase in the next year, the top three are “maintenance of cars, central air conditioning, and floor heating” (accounting for 43.38%), “movie and TV memberships” (accounting for 40.25%), and “health and fitness services” (accounting for 35.80%).
The survey found that artificial intelligence big models may be a new opportunity for service consumption. 15.90% of respondents plan to purchase membership services for big models by 2025, while 52.75% would like to have remote maintenance services for home appliances and cars based on artificial intelligence. Additionally, 63.98% of respondents are looking forward to the official use of car self-driving functions and hope to purchase related services, while 65.53% expect more smart devices to replace traditional home services.
According to related data, Chinese adults spend an average of 196 minutes, or 3 hours and 16 minutes, on their mobile phones daily in 2024. A type of big model intelligent proxy that can operate mobile phones instead of people, covering functions such as searching for news, purchasing goods, ordering takeout food, social networking, etc., is gradually attracting the attention of a large number of consumers. Although the internet consumption has long formed a convention of implementing a “user-end free model” by charging commissions from merchants or embedding advertisements, more and more consumers are beginning to pay attention to potential conflicts of interest in this model. The survey shows that 24.63% of respondents are willing to pay for mobile phone big model intelligent proxies, expecting them to fully consider consumers’ interests and provide reliable information when searching for products.
The survey also identified a series of bottlenecks in the service consumption field. For example, 63.50% of respondents reported that health and fitness businesses lack professionalism in terms of staff expertise; 60.57% said it is difficult to find personnel to dismantle and dispose of old appliances when updating home appliances; 57.65% felt that the effects of light cosmetic services cannot be quantified, making it difficult to choose; 50.58% pointed out that the intelligentization of home equipment internet services is insufficient; and 41.27% said they have not purchased indoor renewal services due to concerns about affecting their normal living environment such as window replacement and installation of water heaters and heating systems. Additionally, 33.25% of respondents believed that the lack of personalized and segmented tourism products affects their overall satisfaction with travel experiences.
With the rapid development of general artificial intelligence and robotics industries, this survey also specifically explored consumers’ demand for home service robots. The results showed that 98.62% of respondents expressed a strong desire to own a home service robot, demonstrating a high willingness to purchase such products. In terms of pricing, many respondents (37.58%) are willing to spend between RMB 200,000 and RMB 300,000 on a home service robot, followed by those willing to pay between RMB 300,000 and RMB 400,000 (accounting for 28.9%). Those willing to pay between RMB 100,000 and RMB 200,000 make up another significant group (18.55%), while those willing to pay over RMB 400,000 account for relatively fewer people (13.58%).
