Feedback from elderly people and Supermarket Survey Results || task3

When the challenge is creating a new service idea for customers, best approach seems to go and ask to them, and watch them while they are shopping. Sometimes seeing it yourself is even better than asking people how they feel about the experience itself. This week I went to my local supermarket, Sainsbury's. It is a very hard to talk with people when they are in a place that they actually want to go out as soon as possible but I managed to chat with several elderly people, who were also my target audience for that visit. I prepared a survey with which I can reach people who use internet and also my network which is mostly consisted of young people.

Talking with elderly people change the way I think about their expectations. The first think comes to mind for a service that can satisfy them is a possible delivery service to their houses, from our point of view it seems to be their biggest struggle but the actual case is so much different.

First of all let's list what they dislike about supermarkets:

1. When there were more local markets, local shops they were mostly closer to everyone's houses. Today there are very big supermarkets but generally they are far away and if you do not have a car, or not on a bus route you have to walk all the way, on the return with bags.
   
2. Supermarkets think that they are so organised and fast, but they are still very much complicated and because they are so big, even buying 3-4 things might require walking through inside building.
   
3. Especially on rush hours it gets harder for them to shop, so many people, confusing storage systems and queues turn shopping into a challenge.
   
   
   

Delivery service by supermarkets idea at first seems to be a perfect solution but it is actually far away from solving anything. Elderly people, despite the effort they have to put, actually like shopping possibly more than most of us. They want to be outside, be a part of society and more active. Shopping is not just about getting necessary items but also a chance to chat, run into familiar faces and a reason to be outside.

So far 44 people responded to my supermarket survey, which can still be found on this link.

I have a detailed report on results, which is available in this link.

When I looked at the results in detail, several points stand out.

People spend quite a lot of their free time in supermarkets.

They like product variety and being able to buy not just food but generally most of their needs in one place.

They dislike crowds, queues, payment systems, unpleasant staff and complex price tagging and shelf systems.

Results also showed several demands from customers actually in contradiction with each other. Customers still want a
faster, smoother
shopping systems, which actually promotes a more mechanical development but at the same time they
dislike the inhuman
approach of supermarkets, staff working like robots, fast and careless
about individual needs of customers.

They both want
speed, but also more human experience, which is hard to achieve at the same time. On the other hand, this fact, at some point explains why with all the self payment machines and development on speed are not still enough. In some supermarkets you can go, shop, pay by yourself
on the machines even
without saying a single word
to anyone. This is not considered as a pleasant experience.