Case Study on the Business Model of Smart Senior Care Enterprises

Abstract: As the aging problem is increasingly serious in China, the “Silver” industry rooted in seniors has brought huge market potential. Numerous private entrepreneurs swarm into the industry, and all kinds of innovative senior care business models are emerging. Particularly, accompanied with the swift development of the Internet, IoT, AI and big data, SSC (Smart Senior Care) has become the most prevalent business model at the moment. However, the SSC industry keeps reshuffling, and there are still few enterprises that have both the Internet gene and relatively mature models. In Chengdu, a city in western China, an Internet + SSC venture company - Maimai Senior Care has been successfully incubated by Chengdu Tianfu Software Park, whose rapid development in recent years and frequent obtaining of financing have caught the eye of quite a lot of insiders. It has truly become a dark horse in Chinese SSC market. As a representative of Chinese SSC enterprises, how could Maimai Senior Care develop so fast? What are the key factors for its swift development? In this study, the Business Model Canvas has been adopted, whose nine elements are used to develop operational definitions and metrics to identify the business model of Maimai Senior Care. Through case study, this paper has put forward specific key metrics to examine the connotation of business models of SSC enterprises, exploring and analyzing possible relationship among the proposition, creation and delivery of values in terms of the business model of Maimai Senior Care. According to the study, the relationship among these key factors of business models may vary from four constructs, namely service concept, customer interface, service transfer system and sci-tech application. Such variation can not only be used to interpret theoretical perspectives about business models in depth, but also allow managers of SSC enterprises to be better informed of the critical information. In response to the rapidly changing background of senior care industry, SSC entrepreneurs can, based on the outcome of this study, design novel business models. 

Key words: smart senior care; business model innovation; value proposition; Maimai senior care; case study

        JEL code: M1