Life service industry accelerates towards digitalization (Online China)

  Online ride-hailing, food delivery, online shopping... In recent years, the development of the digital economy has given birth to new business formats such as platform economy and sharing economy, and the life service industry is accelerating its digitization.

The National Development and Reform Commission recently issued the "Several Opinions on Promoting the Life Service Industry to Make up for Shortcomings and Improve People's Quality of Life" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), and put forward 30 specific measures in 9 aspects for the development of the life service industry, including Promote service digital empowerment.

  New business formats and new models emerge endlessly

  In March of this year, Zhejiang Jinhua’s “online order store delivery” medical insurance settlement officially launched a pilot program.

After local insured persons bind their medical insurance card on the mobile payment platform, they can place an order through some online platforms to realize "buying medicines without running errands, but also paying for medical insurance."

Today, this convenient digital service has covered all counties and cities in Jinhua.

  As the boundaries of "Internet +" continue to widen, the life service industry is entering the fast lane of digital transformation.

What is the life service industry?

In short, it refers to the service activities that meet the final consumption needs of residents, involving many fields such as culture, tourism, sports, health, elderly care, and education.

  The rapid development of China's digital economy and the large scale of users have provided a solid foundation and a good atmosphere for the digital empowerment of the life service industry.

The "White Paper on China's Digital Economy Development (2021)" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that China's digital economy will reach 39.2 trillion yuan in 2020, accounting for 38.6% of GDP.

Among the three industries, the service industry has the highest level of digitalization, with a digital economy accounting for 40.7%, which is higher than the overall economy (38.6%), industry (21.0%), and agriculture (8.9%).

  "Consumption in the life service industry has become one of the important drivers of China's consumption growth. Supported by the huge traffic demand of more than 1 billion Internet users, the life service industry has a considerable market scale." Guangdong University of Finance and Economics School of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Economy Industry In an interview with our reporter, Vice President Wang Fangfang pointed out that during the epidemic prevention period, the digital transformation of the life service industry has accelerated, the innovation model has shown diversified characteristics, and the service method has paid more attention to the integration of offline and online.

  Promote high-quality economic development

  According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to October this year, online retail sales across the country exceeded 10 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.4%, of which online retail sales of physical goods increased by 14.6% year-on-year.

Industry insiders believe that a major feature of the digital transformation of China's life service industry is that offline scenarios accelerate online, and the front-end consumer Internet drives the development of the back-end industrial Internet.

  Wang Fangfang believes that during the epidemic prevention period, digital life services have effectively guaranteed people's daily life, study and work; strong market demand has prompted relevant companies to accelerate digital transformation to improve their own production and operational efficiency, which is to ensure the healthy and stable development of small, medium and micro enterprises. Provided important support.

At the same time, as the proportion of the life service industry in the national economy is increasing, its digital development will further expand the industry boundary and open up new space for the service industry to move towards high-quality development.

  The Ministry of Commerce, the Central Cyberspace Administration of China and the National Development and Reform Commission recently issued the "Fourteenth Five-Year" E-Commerce Development Plan, which pointed out that it is necessary to lead the upgrading of consumption, cultivate high-quality digital life, and propose to "create a new scene of digital life consumption" and "enrich online life services." Specific targets such as “new supply” and “meeting new demands for offline life services”.

  During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the role and status of the digital economy will continue to improve, and the necessity of digital transformation of the life service industry will be further highlighted.

Wu Qi, Executive Dean of Wuxi Digital Economy Research Institute, analyzed that the digital transformation of the life service industry can not only expand consumer demand, promote dynamic optimization of supply and demand, and achieve effective matching, but also optimize service methods, improve the quality and efficiency of industry development, and meet the diverse needs of the people. To provide assistance for personalized needs, promote industrial transformation and upgrading, and high-quality economic development.

  Let the digital transformation of the life service industry be on the right track

  For a period of time, incidents such as platform monopoly, big data destruction, personal information leakage, and letter scrambling have been common occurrences.

How to ensure that the digital transformation of the life service industry is always on the right track?

  In Wang Fangfang’s view, there are some shortcomings in the development of the digital lifestyle service industry, for example: the service level is not high enough to meet the personalized and diversified needs of consumers; platform unfair competition, infringement of consumer privacy and other behavioral damage The normal order of competition in the digital market.

"All parties should build consensus and clearly define the ownership of commercial data resources; relevant departments should strengthen anti-monopoly legislation and law enforcement in the digital economy, strengthen supervision of key areas of the Internet, and promote the healthy and orderly development of the platform economy."

  Experts believe that the digital transformation of the life service industry is inseparable from the vigorous promotion of the government at the level of Introduce a level playing field and stimulate the enthusiasm of enterprises for innovation and entrepreneurship.

  The recently released "Opinions" propose to guide e-commerce platform companies to provide one-stop and integrated services for market entities in accordance with laws and regulations; to ensure data security and protect personal privacy, develop open sharing standards and catalogs of life service data in different areas List etc.

  Wu Qi suggested that it should be promoted from multiple levels such as top-level design, application innovation, element support, and governance capabilities to promote the digital transformation and high-quality development of the life service industry.

"Specifically, one is to issue more relevant guidance or special action plans, clarify the direction, focus and path of transformation, and improve the collaborative governance model of the government, enterprises, and society; the second is to accelerate the development of digital technology in the life service industry. Integrate applications to give full play to the value of digital technology; third, increase policy support and broaden financing channels for related companies; fourth, further clarify measures to support the development of new business formats in the life service industry, vigorously improve the digital skills of practitioners, and expand the career development of practitioners Space. The fifth is to drive the overall digital transformation of the life service industry through pilot demonstrations, government purchases of services, and open government resources, and reduce barriers to the transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises."

Li Jiabao